Hollow Knight
Publisher: Team Cherry
Release Date: June 12, 2018
Platforms: Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC
Rating: E10+
Genre: Action-Adventure
Hollow No More
Written by Jesse Seilhan
Metroidvania is a poor way to describe the kind of game Hollow Knight is, but it is a good start. You begin your quest alone and in the dark, underpowered, confused, lost, with a hit or two separating you from your life. Each screen you advance toward is pitch black on your poorly drawn map and the only thing between you and the myriad violent bugs is a tiny sword known as a “nail.” You can upgrade it, but that won’t be for at least a dozen hours and countless deaths, as the world of Hollow Knight takes no prisoners. Your first boss fight will most certainly humble you, as the attack patterns and damage output are beyond anything you’ve seen thus far. When you die, you’re forced to hunt down your ghost, defeat it in battle, gather your lost currency, and try it all over again. It’s oppressive, it’s frustrating, but it just may be the best game of 2018 for those who want a little challenge in their gaming.
While not cut exactly from the same cloth as the Dark Souls franchise, their tailors are certainly swapping notes. Hollow Knight lets you play through a macabre fantasy world, filled with more than a dozen zones that vary in style, substance, and enemy placements. Controls will be familiar to anyone who grew up playing Castlevania or those who enjoy modern parallels like Rogue Legacy or Shovel Knight. The action and its animations are snappy, giving complete control over jumps, swings, and magic attacks (which open up after a few hours). Boss fights definitely test your dexterity, as you’ll need to dive, duck, dodge, and destroy in a timely manner if you don’t want to battle them again. But if you do, some unlock a second, more powerful version of the fight to get some more goodies on your road to becoming the Hollow Knight.
The real differentiator in this game is the Charm system. There are dozens of them, each modifying the game in some significant way. Some charms enhance your overall health, some increase damage, while others may speed up magic casting or resource collection. A few have mixed benefits, but you have to weigh pros and cons as you only have a limited amount of charms that can be equipped at once, creating moments of reflection before a big boss fight or tough platforming section. That very platforming can cause the most drama, as your combat skills may be fantastic but if your jumping and maneuvering aren’t so hot, this game will punish you. Spikes, traps, hidden enemies, and more will ruin a great run, but brave adventurers will find tons of secret paths, hidden items, and, in every zone, a cartographer who (for a price) will reveal your current surroundings in your map, complete with paths to and fro other parts of the game.
The story is as confusing as it is obscured, as each NPC reveals just a tiny sliver of this dank underground universe one confusing line at a time. Some send you on fetch quests that reward you with a little more of the plot, while others won’t talk to you if you haven’t yet met some requirement. But what we do know is that an infection has spread across Hallownest, the overworld you inhabit and fight in. There is a Pale King, a tunnel system that acts as a fast travel conduit, over 50 unique enemy types, and multiple endings for those brave enough to go over the 100% completion mark. Most of these extra-curricular activities are optional, but do pay off if you want to get the full story.
Hollow Knight is not for everyone, but it’s not as clean cut as “if you do/don’t like Dark Souls, do/don’t play this game.” While some of the same mechanics exist (brutal combat, corpse runs, obfuscated lore), Hollow Knight has way more focus on platforming and exploring than most DS clones. The music is enchanting and near-perfect, the art style holds up throughout all the various palette changes, and the volume of DLC included in the console versions of the game make this a 30+ hour journey. The Switch’s handheld nature makes it the perfect version to own, as you can pick up and knock out a few fights in between other engagements or get sucked into the world for hours on end on the big screen at home. Either way, this is one of the best games of the year and anyone serious about exploring, fighting, and learning more with each step should give it a spin.
One of the best things about video games is the sheer variety of games that can exist. Sure, there is disproportionate amount of games where you are a generic soldier running down a hallway shooting the opposing force, but there are plenty of strange, unique titles that attempt to do things differently. Vampyr, from Dontnod Entertainment, is one of the latter games. With its strange combination of Action RPG and British turn-of-the-century hospital drama, the real question is whether Vampyr can stick the landing.
Taking place in post World War 1 London, Vampyr tells the story of Jonathan Reid, a military doctor trying to help out a district of London beset by an outbreak of the Spanish flu. Helping to cure patients and help relieve the beleaguered citizens, Reid must also face strange goings on in the night, nefarious criminals, and religious fanatics all vying for control of the city. If that isn’t enough to deal with, Jonathan Reid has to deal with the fact that he has recently been turned into a vampire and has to drink human blood to survive. That last part really complicates things.
The dialogue and leveling system is where Vampyr really tries some new ideas, and some of it really shines. A huge part of the game is simply getting to know the characters in the game. Outside of random enemies, there aren’t generic NPCs filling the town. Rather, the districts are filled with specific, named characters all with complicated backstories and interwoven histories. Developers Dontnod have some experience with well written characters, with their previous game Life is Strange, and that pedigree is on display here as well. Every NPC you meet is full of interesting quirks and story, with almost no character fitting neatly into an archetype. Getting to know the characters and finding out their secrets is half the fun of the game.
However, getting to know the people of London can be a double edged sword. Remember, Reid is a vampire, and you need to eat people to survive. Every single character in the game can be killed, with each one affecting the district in different ways, most of them always surprising. Additionally, you can elect to eat no one, but you make the game harder, as drinking the blood of a citizen gives you experience points, which you use to fuel you vampiric powers in combat. This is one of the most unique parts of Vampyr: playing the heroic good guy is absolutely harder than simply chowing down. However, the only way to get the most out of killing an NPC for experience is to fill out their history and learn all their secrets. In order to be a powerful evil vampire, you have to absolutely get to know your victims. This is a smart choice, as it causes even the most hardened of bloodsucker to have to think about who they kill.
With the dialogue and story being a high point, combat is where the game suffers a bit. It certainly isn’t bad by any stretch, taking cues from Dark Souls and Bloodborne with a stamina system and lock on combat that feels familiar. You also have vampire powers that are fueled by blood that are very powerful and make you feel a step above the enemies you are fighting. As simple as the combat can feel, it does elicit a raw thrill every time you knock an enemy down and bite them to refill your blood meter. You also have melee weapons to upgrade and firearms to use, but those feel pedestrian next to your vampire claws or shooting a spear made out of blood from your hands.
Vampyr certainly isn’t perfect. The game makes a big point of telling the player that your choices will always have consequences, and the game doesn’t let you out of that either with a single save system that auto saves after everything you do. It is exciting when you make a choice and things in the game happen that you did not expect, like in real life. It is much more annoying when you choose a dialogue choice that causes you to fail getting a secret out of an NPC for no real shown reason. Both of these things happen in Vampyr. You can also try and eat the person you think is most expedible to a district only to find out they were key to some side quest, but honestly that actually helps make the decision have more weight.
In all, Vampyr is a unique game that feels like it belongs to another generation, when weird, medium budget games were much more common, and developers took more risks with mechanics. Not everything works out, but the story and the atmosphere make Vampyr worth checking out.