Facts:
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. Aragami faces the CHAIRQUISITION!
Game: Aragami
Webzone: store.steampowered.com/app/280160/
Devel: Lince Works
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99
Wazzat: Aragami is a third person stealth game that casts you as an undead assassin with the power to control the shadows. Teleport to any shadow, become invisible, materialize weapons or even summon a shadow dragon to infiltrate the enemy ranks and dispose of your targets.
Mandatory Disclosure: The devs sent us keys
CHAIRQUISITION:
Makes with the working
V-
- Facts:
- 1. Ninjas are mammals.
- 2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
- 3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.
- Nicely multithreaded and often using 100% of the GPU.
- Seeing between 75-120 FERPS @ 1080.
- UHD /w the 980 knocks it down to the 30’s.
- This critter seems to enjoy AMD physical coreiness.
- J-man will get his revenge next week because Mad Max.
J-
- Do not run this at UHD. With a 980, you’re averaging 25fps
- As of 17:35 Oct 14, an update they released causes the game to segfault
- There be a fix:http://steamcommunity.com/app/280160/
- The update did bring about some better performances, averaging above 70
P-
- There must have been 2 updates while I was sleeping, because when I woke up after the update the game still worked just fine for me.
- At 1080p with the 1080 and the FX8370E overclocked at 4.2GHz, I don’t think it ever dipped below 90FerPS.
- It usually averages 130-140.
Total-
Shiny / Sounds
V-
- Didn’t have to cut down the background noise because it’s not really thar.
- Budget Navi did ramble on a bit much for my taste.
- Really dig the Borderlands in Japan aesthetic.
- Animation rigging is well done just like the transitions.
- However, we all noticed that Mr. Ninja face already had a sword… when he picked up his sword.
J-
- Very pretty game
- I’m a fan of the cell shaded aesthetic. I also like the main character’s design. He sort of reminds me of Raziel from Legacy of Kain, which makes me sad because we’re never going to see another one of those games
- The voice acting is kind of there, but I skipped past most of the cutscenes and conversation. I just couldn’t care
P-
- This is yet another game which very clearly focuses on the aesthetics, sometimes at the expense of functionality… But more on that later.
- The girl who summons you looks… off. It’s like they’ve managed to figure out exactly how to represent the Uncanny Valley in a cell-shaded game.
- Commendable, yes, but I don’t think that was their intention.
- Thankfully, she’s mostly only present during “set pieces” and cutscenes.
- And something else I’m thankful for, the developers must have had the self-awareness necessary to evaluate their cutscenes because they even put in an achievement when you skip one the first time.
- But I’m getting sidetracked…
- The game looks very good, platinum blonde sorceress lady aside.
- The “Japanese” is kept to a minimum and drowned in several layers of synth to possibly mask the non-native japanese-ness of the voice actors.
- But, if I’m being honest, these are nitpicks and not particularly significant ones at that.
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Control
V-
- I only tried this with the XClone because raisins.
- Everything was logically mapped OOTB.
- Aiming reticule was a bit oversensitive but it’s adjustable.
- Alright, that getting killed to death because waiting for animation thing is REAL.
- You spend 10min stealth noping everyone only to get noped by the last guy because Mr. Ninja face apparently FSM damn freezes until the alert animation finishes.
- That lead to a rage Alt+F4.
J-
- Don’t play this game with the steam controller
- On the xbox controller, it’s fine
- I don’t like that you need to unlock the hiding of bodies. It hurts my MGS brain
P-
- Why do developers think players will enjoy being locked into an animation in a game where you need to be able to be nimble and quickly move/stab/teleport?
- Several times I had a getsuga tenshou thrown at my face while I was furiously trying to move or teleport out of there, but couldn’t because I was stuck looking at the same overlong animation.
- It’s a very good looking animation, don’t get me wrong, but after being killed for the unpteenth fucking time because there’s an extra 1 or 2 seconds of animation which serve no other purpose than for the developers to stroke their aesthetic prowess all over our faces, I don’t give a flying fuck how proficient you are at animating.
- Still, it’s great to see a proper controls settings screen and especially when you have a mouse sensitivity slider that actually works like you’d expect it to, in a Unity game.
- What is it with games nowadays having you hold a button for 2/3rds of a second to do something?
- What happened to simply hitting the button when you’re in front of thing X and having thing Y happen? When did that simple concept become a faux pas in game development?
Total-
FUN
V-
- This is one sneaky game.
- You play as Mr. Ninja Face on a mission to flip out a kill people.
- Well, that’s what I did until J-man noted you could beat levels without going all American Psycho.
- Honestly that never crossed my mind-organ because, well, me.
- Like what is wrong with your face simulator you spend most of the time crouching in the shadows.
- Unlike what is wrong with your face simulator the ability to hide bodies is something that needs unlocking.
- Why not allow that from the start, Brad?
- Admittedly I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing this in forever alone mode but about an hour in it makes /w the tedious.
- And getting animation FKD can kill my desire to continue.
- Why? Checkpoints.
- Can we get a halfway checkpoint in the levels, Brad?
- Because I tend to get noped towards the end and that’s followed by a uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh + quit.
- Now in multiplayer mode you at least have the hope/chance of your companion finishing and if they don’t you can at least give each other shite.
- In single player it’s just repetitive.
- Giving it two plus an Asteroid because with a few small adjustments we just might have proper game.
J-
- Ninjas apparently are adverse to water, like common cats or vampires
- Honestly, this just feels like a prettier, more bound shadwen
- Unlike shadwen, this has multiplayer to eliminate the monotonousness of the gameplay
- I don’t really care about the story
- NUUUUUUUUUUUPE
- I can’t help but compare this sort of thing to the sneaking that Metal gear solid V has
- You’re encouraged to take your time and methodically plan from the outside. Here, the sneaking is just kind of frustrating since you’re limited by your information and options
- At least Shadwen let you hide the bodies
- In short, this game is pretty, but the stealth feels rather limited, which kind of defeats the purpose of this sort of game
P-
- I didn’t hate Aragami.
- But I get the feeling the game doesn’t like me very much, or at least not anywhere near as much as it seems to like itself.
- Every single takedown is masterfully executed, animation-wise without relying on gore-glorification, and during every one the game slows down ever so slightly to ensure you get a real good look at it.
- At every chance it gets, the game will take the controls away from the player and ensure we’re looking at admittedly very well done set-pieces the game wants you to see.
- Much like Pavilion, what we threw chairs at last week, Aragami is functional game with a very simple set of mechanics, which is hurt by developers who want the players to witness just how justified their course in animation wasn’t a complete waste of money, “See that dad?”
- Aragami is a power fantasy, but not in the same way you have power fantasies in other video games. The power fantasy here is not that of the player, but of the animation designer attempting to mask their insecurities.
- There are games which make failure feel like a challenge, Enter the Gungeon, Rocket League, Dark Souls, you can find an example of one such game in every genre.
- In Aragami failure feels like bullshit.
- I found myself hitting Alt-F4 more than any other single button in this game.
Total-
Final –
