GAME REVIEW: Skelattack (Switch)

(Homesick - Blue Wednesday)

I've said many times in my reviews that I love Metroidvania games.  I'm a huge fan of them.  Naturally then, when I heard that Konami, along with a game studio called Uzuka, recently released a Metroidvania for the Switch called 'Skelattack', my interest was raised.  I went on the internet and I watched the launch trailer for it:

The prospect of this game excited me.  I've long held that AAA studios and publishers need to get over themselves, get back to basics, and start releasing tighter titles like so many Indie studios have been doing for well over a decade.  Now, here, Konami finally looked like they might have listened.  I happily forked over the $20 for this title, started to play their contribution to possibly my favorite video game genre of all time, and immediately realized that while the game had some problems, it was not bad.

Then I realized the absolutely huge problem with that, and wondered if Konami and Uzuka had as well.

Let me explain.

'First Of Its Kind' is a funny position to be in.  On one hand, you have the undeniable fact that the first something of any kind is typically very unrefined.  If it's a remarkable thing like Xerox's chunky pointing device that was developed back in the '70s, Tolkein's stories from Middle Earth, or the first attempts at prosthetic lenses for the human eye, those devices will be looked back upon may years later and heralded as objects that ushered in marvelous new things in spite of the fact that they are considered extremely rudimentary by today's standards of their respective industries.

The alternative is something like Betamax.  Or for the younger kids, HD DVD.

Occasionally, you run into the first of a breed that isn't garbage.  Occasionally, science -- or more likely some strange combination of planetary alignment, dark magic, and bong resin -- produces a masterpiece right out of the gate.  The future may bring improvements to the state of the art by dint of the evolution of technology, but the progenitor is never overshadowed. This kind of situation is extremely rare.  In the case of video games, I can think of only two genres:

- Dungeon Looter ala Diablo and Diablo II

- Metroidvania ala Super Nintendo and Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night.

Super Metroid was released in 1994.  SOTN was released in 1997.  Both of those games are over 20 years.  They're both bulletproof titles.  They are hallowed.  Super Metroid is largely responsible for the birth of video game speed running and is considered to be one of the greatest games of all time.  I personally play it through completely at least once a year.

In order to meaningfully contribute to the genre, you don't just have to bring your  'A' game.  That doesn't cut it.  You could go the route of homage, as in the case of the love letter that is Axiom Verge, but Thomas Happ knew that a worthy homage still had to be incredibly good.  And so it was.

No, in order to stand out in the Metroidvania genre, you have to make a great game that has the added benefit of some kind of extra credit.  Consider the great games of the last 15 years in this genre. If you Google 'Greatest Metroidvania Games Of All Time', you'll get a huge list with over 40 games on it.   You will have heard of most of those games if you have any kind of awareness of this genre at all.  Over half of them sold in massive numbers.  Now narrow that list down even further to some absolute GIANTS:

- Hollow Knight

- Ori And The Blind Forest

- Axiom Verge

- The Shadow Complex

- Steamworld Dig 2

The five games mentioned above are all nearly perfect games that all brought something special to the genre, all refined it, all honed it somehow.  They are GOATS in a category full of GOATS.  

Much of this is owed to the fact that Metroidvania may be the single most beloved genre in gaming today.  No, don't mistake 'beloved' for 'popular', though I'll grant you the Koreans may have something to interject here about Starcraft.  People who build games for this genre are typically working from a deep sense of passion and respect for the source materials.  The long poles in the tent know where they came from.  

Which finally brings us back to the problem with 'Skelattack'.  It's not a bad game, though it -does- have a few warts. 

What in the world were they thinking?!

How do you even think about approaching this genre without your A-Game and the A-Games of everyone else on the block as well?  Worse, how do you make the call to approach this genre with what is very generously a 'B-' Game?  I CANNOT EVEN!  This, then, is the problem with making anything short of a stellar Metroidvania these days.  It's been done so well so many times that there aren't many excuses for doing it poorly.  As a result, the barometer for what constitutes a 'good' Metroidvania is...a little on the high side.  Anything less than a damn good game is...well, kinda bad. That's where Skelattack unfortunately lands.  

The story in the game is unremarkable, with a twist that you can see coming a mile away if you have any imagination whatsoever.  Whatever.  I can forgive an otherwise good game a weak story.  The audio and visuals of the game are equal parts 'nothing special' and 'not given enough thought'.  It doesn't look bad, it's just utterly...unremarkable. Nothing stands out except the font in the dialogue boxes, which is criminally small.

This game goes from 'Not Bad' to 'Bad' in the worst possible place: the gameplay itself.

The platforming and controls in Skelattack are sharp and precise. The game is easy to play, easy to understand, and relatively lenient with its frequent checkpoint system.  Those are all good things, because the platforming I was talking about earlier? It's brutal.  Right from the start, Skulattack paves the way towards a massive death count.

Many games of this type have damage traps along their platform routes with the occasional hazard resulting in instant death rather than a sliver of damage.  Skelattack is exactly the opposite.  The vast majority of the dangers you encounter are instant death.  Now, that's not such a problem on its own. As I mentioned, the checkpoint system is -very- forgiving.  What's not forgiving is your wallet.  The game has collectable currency that you -need- in order to unlock upgrades that make the game more easily beatable.  Die?  You lose a huge chunk of currency.  Can you get it back?  Sure!  It's right where your old body was.  Die again though, and you lose that currency that was previously waiting for you, plus -another- chunk of currency from your wallet.  This would also not be a problem on its own, but as I mentioned, you die in Skelattack. A lot.

A WHOLE DAMN LOT.

Finally rack up a small crop of cash?  Great!  Better haul ass back to town before the boss fight.  When you die in a boss fight, you lose money, and then immediately lose the chance to reclaim that money.  You can go from really rich to really poor while trying to get over any of the game's bosses, and there's a whole section of the game towards the end where you cannot go back to the game's hub area and spend your money.  You wade through what is one of the game's much easier sections, gleeful because you're finally starting to store more of that damn money up!...but then before you can escape that section, you have to fight a boss.  Actually, the game makes you fight TWO bosses.  At the same time.

It is controller-throwingly bad design.

The 'death and money' issue would be bad enough to make me wary of recommending this game to someone, but there are other issues here as well that need to be addressed:

- The map for this is suspect.  In a Metroidvania, there will be places you can return to later to explore.  This map doesn't make that easy at all.  It's basically a vague outline of the room you're in and the locations of the exits from it.  There's no encouragement here to return and re-explore.  The one time I ever backtracked to an earlier area was to cheese mobs, earn money, and buy the health upgrade available to you at the very beginning of the game that there was no way in hell I could afford at that time.  And speaking of Metroidvanias...

- This really isn't one.  While there's mild back-tracking, the vast majority of the hard barriers between you and exploration are typically overcome with a power up that you find mere minutes after encountering the first barrier of that type.  Case in point: The red block barriers and the boomerang.  There is almost no backtracking required to use hard-won upgrades to explore and upgrade your character.  The most backtracking I ever did was with the afore-mentioned boomerang, and I went back a whopping two screens.

- You attack twice as fast in the air as you do on the ground, which leads to a ton of you hopping and swinging like a lunatic.  IN a game full of instant death hazards, that's a recipe for frustration.  Why?! Why do it that way?!

- You'll notice that you occasionally Critical something when you're beating on it with your sword, which makes you start asking questions about your damage.  Only then do you realize that there are TINY little damage numbers floating up in the air when you kill something.  Again, TOO SMALL!  If you're gonna do this, take a lesson from Rogue Legacy or SOTN.

- WHY IS EVERYTHING SO GODDAMNED SMALL?!  I squint so much playing this thing in hand-held mode!

- There is no 'X Factor' in this game anywhere.  There's nothing here that compels me to drop what I'm doing and return to this game other than casual fun.  I will never play this game again.  There's nothing here that stands out as remarkable or unique.  It's just...some game.  It never really evolves or turns into something remarkable. 

- You are punished for not exploring.  Exploration is normally something I try to do in my games, but when Skelattack makes you regret anything other than hauling balls to the exit in its dungeons as fast as possible to avoid losing your hard-earned currency, exploring down a random, trap-ridden corridor is not high on your priority list.  The punishment?  The game is hiding some abilities from you very early in the game that would prove the difference between a frustrating playthrough and an enjoyable one. LIKE A HEAL SPELL.  If you get out of the sewers and into the forest and you don't have the heal spell, GO BACK.

Viewed on its own, Skelattack is not that bad of a game.  Unfortunately, 'not a bad game' doesn't come anywhere near close to cutting it when you consider how much farther along the rest of the genre is in every single aspect.  This game could have been made much better with a few very small changes, and in a way, I feel sorry for Konami and Uzuka.  I'm certain that hard work went into this game, but that doesn't excuse it from a number of failings that bring it very sharply down from 'not bad' to just...bad.