CelesteOn a fundamental gameplay level, this may be the worst game I've ever subjected myself to. (The story isn't any better, but I'll get to that
)
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Mad because bad." To some extent, this is true: I am mad at the game, because it is bad. Now I shall attempt to explain why.
The core gameplay loop of
Celeste consists of the following: Start jumping through a map, die to something you don't have the time to observe even exists (as you cannot see the whole map when you begin), then repeat again and again until you can actually memorize the map and have muscle memory that can carry you through with your eyes closed.
The problem with this method (well, one of many, but this is the big one) is the following: you cannot adjust for mistimed button inputs. The consequence of this is that if your plan isn't working, you *cannot know* if this is because you have fundamentally planned out an incorrect course, or because your muscle memory isn't exactly perfect on every single run. The result is the same: you shall die to the same jump hundreds of times - or
thousands of times, if you refuse to give in and just quit from running the same two jumps for several days.
I greatly enjoy
Dark Souls and
Bloodborne, which are notoriously difficult. But they teach you how to beat them in a very different manner: Miyazaki understands that *progress* is the key to learning. You can make a mistake and get killed, but you know not to make that mistake again. Will you make that mistake in the heat of battle? Yuuuup. But you are given tools to adjust for poor judgment. You can panic roll at the cost of stamina, you can put up a shield while you're learning to give yourself time to watch an enemy's attack patterns, you can try attacking at different times to observe the results and see if one method is better than another. You *will* most likely get killed, but you can see that you do more damage by attacking at certain times, you can see where openings are, you can spot an enemy's weakpoints,
you can learn how to defeat a seemingly insurmountable foe by taking mental notes and comparing "does method A work better than method B?"
In contrast,
Celeste kills you for a single mistake. You cannot see the map ahead of you, so you cannot know if you have to hold onto your dash or if you can spend it. You cannot know if you need to tackle a certain gap from the southeast or from the south, because you need pixel perfect placement either way, and you can run the same jump over and over
and never make any sort of progress.
I'm not stupid. Correction: I am stupid. But I'm not so stupid as to keep doing the same thing over and over without taking breaks and seeing if my brain is just learning bad habits and keeping me from succeeding. (I routinely took breaks against
Bloodborne bosses and came back a day or two later so I could observe them dispassionately.) With
Celeste, I don't know if I'm getting better, because even if my strategy is correct, and even if my muscle memory is spot on for the first five sections of a jumping puzzle, *I can't know* if that fifth jump is correct - if I need to come at that gap from the south or southwest - because I must succeed at the sixth jump to know if I have done the fifth correctly. (I am thinking of a particular jump that just made me quit the game, in case you can't tell.) In
Bloodborne, I can make mistakes and study their consequences. In
Celeste, I don't know what a mistake is, because I have to succeed at the next jump to *know if my tactic is even viable.* And if it is not viable - if I need to come at this gap directly from the south -
I will have to teach myself entirely new muscle memory for the first several jumps just so I can come at this one from the correct angle. In other words, my first five jumps can be correct in getting me as far as the sixth jump,
but if they cannot get me through that, I need to start over from scratch[/b]. All of those jumps I learned because they got me through to the next jump
may not be correct if they set me up for the sixth jump
at the wrong angle. I need to reteach my thumbs to learn an entirely new pattern.
Which means that I have to hope that what I have taught myself is correct, because if it isn't, it will take me death after death after death to even see if another route is possible, because my thumbs must have perfect timing on each and every jump in a pattern.
The game doesn't teach. It only punishes. You get slapped for getting something wrong, without knowing if you got it wrong on step 5 or step 1. The game says that dying is just a sign that you're learning, but this is horseshit. Progress is a sign that you're learning. Dying on the same jump over and over is a sign that you're dying on the same jump over and over, with no way to tell what the problem with your approach is.
Okay, let's talk collectables. There are side collectables of strawberries throughout the game, for making particularly devilish jumps. These add nothing to the game outside of bragging rights, and because they exist solely for challenge, there is no reason to go for them if you are not enjoying the core gameplay loop. This sounds fine in theory - it's an extra challenge mode for people who are having fun! - but the psychological effect is that the game is teaching the player who is not enjoying himself -
- to not engage with the game. In a game I enjoy, this would have the effect of "COOL! SOMETHING NEW I CAN EXPLORE AND LEARN!" In
Celeste, it has the effect of making me want to only play what I need to play to get it over with.
This should never be what I think when I see an extra challenge mode or collectable or side mission. There should be a reward of some sort for doing them, and the reward should be (a.) worth the effort of doing the side content, and (b.) nothing gamebreaking if I don't do the side content. A small story sidequest is usually the best way to handle these things: you get to see more from the point of view of another character, or... I dunno, help a doggie find its way out of a scrape, or *something* that makes it feel like you are achieving something with the extra challenge mode. If the strawberries only exist for bragging rights, they will only appeal to players who *absolutely, totally LOVE* the game. And good for them! But I think it is bad game design to not offer any rewards for doing more than the bare minimum. I may actually like some of these side puzzles if I had a reason to attempt them! (Highly unlikely, seeing how I despise everything else in the game, but it is a possibility that is left on the floor with this design choice.)
Ooookay, onto the story. The concept is pretty neat: Madeleine wishes to climb this mountain because she's depressed and it will be
some sort of achievement to climb this. To look at herself and say that she can actually succeed at something. This is *really cool* idea for a game story. I sure hope that the game isn't corny and on-the-nose with characters talking about panic attacks and "muh feelings" and how Madeleine really just needs to learn to make friends with cringe hipsters from Seattle and accept the "Part of Me" that is afraid of opening herself up to danger. I swear, this game was written by a teenager who has never struggled with anything in their life outside of what flavor of Hot Pocket to eat in an overflowing freezer. I am on the seventh of eight* levels so I don't know where the story ends, but everything is so on-the-nose, so preachy about "learning to accept who you are" and moving on and I hate all of it. Why are all indie pixel art games this damn treacly?
Undertale is my least favorite game ever (almost entirely because of its story - the gameplay was decent) and this has the same patronizing tone of talking down and "being good for you," instead of having fleshed out characters who have real struggles and feel that they have nowhere to go. Everybody talks so openly about what they are feeling that the game feels like a therapy session for the writers that we have been forced to sit through.
*There are seven levels and one secret level apparently, but the secret level is accessed by getting some secret collectables(?) and I don't know how to do that. I'm okay with collectables offering rewards - see above - but since the game taught me that there are no rewards, I never began looking for super secret side collectables. Bravo, "Extremely Okay Games." Bravo.
So, is there anything I like about the game? Umm... no. The music is mediocre, the background coloring often makes identifying new map features in the millisecond before death quite difficult, the chunky pixel art is serviceable but there's no real artistic merit to it.
1/10
)
- to not engage with the game. In a game I enjoy, this would have the effect of "COOL! SOMETHING NEW I CAN EXPLORE AND LEARN!" In Celeste, it has the effect of making me want to only play what I need to play to get it over with. This should never be what I think when I see an extra challenge mode or collectable or side mission. There should be a reward of some sort for doing them, and the reward should be (a.) worth the effort of doing the side content, and (b.) nothing gamebreaking if I don't do the side content. A small story sidequest is usually the best way to handle these things: you get to see more from the point of view of another character, or... I dunno, help a doggie find its way out of a scrape, or *something* that makes it feel like you are achieving something with the extra challenge mode. If the strawberries only exist for bragging rights, they will only appeal to players who *absolutely, totally LOVE* the game. And good for them! But I think it is bad game design to not offer any rewards for doing more than the bare minimum. I may actually like some of these side puzzles if I had a reason to attempt them! (Highly unlikely, seeing how I despise everything else in the game, but it is a possibility that is left on the floor with this design choice.)