When was
the last time you heard of a good licensed game? As far as I can remember, the
only three occurrences of such a miracle were Ducktales on the NES/Gameboy, Aladdin
on the Megadrive/Genesis and Goldeneye
on the N64: three gems that managed to garner universal praise, three golden
islands rising proudly in the middle of an endless ocean of turds. Licensed
games are a maligned genre if there ever was one, a genre no one expects any
kind of gaming greatness from. Every gamer plays them at some point, sometimes extensively, yet you usually won’t
hear anyone remember fondly their amazing hours spent doing so. For instance, I
went as far as to purchase The Lion King
on three different platforms, namely on Megadrive, Gameboy and Game Gear, and
cleared all three iterations numerous times; and yet I would be hard-pressed to
claim that I truly loved these games and that they are embedded in my memory
until the end of times.
That was
twenty years ago, and I’ve not touched a licensed game since—that is, until my
sister handed me a copy of Brave for
the DS as an impromptu gift. I was nonplussed by such a choice of game, until I
remembered that this was coming from someone who somehow managed to shy away
from licensed games her whole life and thus didn’t have any kind of prejudice
against them. Then, my game collector instinct kicked it and I started rubbing
my hands, elated to have a new game to add to my precious collection. Then I
popped the cartridge out of the box and stuck it into my DS, anxious and
curious at once, and then… Oh dear.
Let’s put
it bluntly: Brave is good. Not the
“good for a licensed game” type of goodness: it’s good per se. It’s an
intrinsically delightful game that I will now praise without the slightest hint
of shame, because I absolutely enjoyed it from beginning to end.
Brave is an oddity in the licensed games landscape,
straying from both the worn-out platforming and mini-game galore approaches
usually favoured by the genre. Instead, Canadian developer Behaviour
Interactive took their cues from the Tomb
Raider series by building up Brave’s
core gameplay around jumping, block-pushing and puzzles of various sorts,
before spicing up the formula with a healthy dose of hack-and-slash goodness.
The result is a surprisingly competent adventure game with a strong combat
element that manages to shine in both departments—as well as in a couple of
others, as we’ll see right now.
Visually, Brave is quite excellent and on par with
the DS’ best offerings. It looks very much like a Playstation-era Tomb Raider entry at first sight, with
its realistic textures, subdued colors, blocky shapes and ever-so-slight
fuzziness. However, it doesn’t take long to notice that Brave is just much better and manages to avoid the inconveniences
that plagued the first Tomb Raider
entries. For one thing, Brave’s
visualisation, for all its similarities with Tomb Raider’s, is actually faux 3D, designed to give more depth to
the game world without compromising the gameplay; as a result, the camera
angles are predetermined and are always wisely selected in order to accommodate
the player’s moves and give them the best possible visibility, making progression
fluid and smooth. For another, Brave
mostly takes place in the wild outdoors, offering the player gorgeous vistas
and sparing them the claustrophobia-inducing endless caves so prominent in the Tomb Raider series. Merida’s animations
are incredible and it’s clear that a lot of work went into designing them:
swift, graceful and light-footed in exploration mode, the red-headed becomes a
ruthless fighter as soon as combat kicks in, dealing powerful and precise blows
while assuming impeccable fighting stances. The enemies’ animations are slower
and more rigid yet fit them perfectly, revealing their status of zombie-like
entities controlled by an external force.
Brave also shines on the aural department, treating
the player to a variety of Celtic-inspired themes that occasionally take a
filmic quality. The fighting theme is deliciously frantic, while the boss theme
is conveniently ominous; other themes range from light-hearted and bubbly to
atmospheric and moody, with a slow yet noticeable progression from the former
to the latter as the game unfolds. Sure, this soundtrack doesn’t pack any
highly memorable track à la ‘The Moon’ in Ducktales,
but it’s still an excellent offering that beautifully completes the graphics
and polishes the atmosphere.
Looks are
all well and good, but how does Brave
fare gameplay-wise? Well, that was probably the biggest surprise here: Brave plays the part perfectly—heck, it plays perfectly, full stop. Brave treats the player to some
stunningly well-honed and efficient physics that could give lessons to many
games—including the aforementioned Tomb
Raider series, often mocked for its clunky physics and for Lara Croft’s
30-ton-truck grace. Brave’s jumping
physics are particularly brilliant: not only can you jump high and far, but you
can also change direction and add some momentum to your jump while in mid-air.
This transforms the jumping business from the dreaded chore it usually is in
these kind of 3D or faux 3D games into a highly pleasurable process that you
can enjoy to the fullest, confident that you’ll land precisely wherever you
want. Brave is also pleasantly fast,
Merida running at a good speed by default. As for the fighting physics, they
are as perfect as the rest. You can switch between the bow and the sword,
knowing that the game harbours a slight positive bias towards the former. (This
may be due to narrative reasons, since Merida is supposed to be the Kingdom’s
best archer in the movie.) The bow benefits from automatic aim providing that
you’re facing enemies, while the sword requires positioning yourself accurately
before delivering a blow; in both cases, the physics are top-notch and incredibly
satisfying. You can even slash your sword or fire an arrow while jumping, which
may not be so useful but is nonetheless enjoyable and very well executed.
Another more useful trick is the possibility to shoot arrows while running
around, which can give you the opportunity to escape potential blows while
continuing to deal damage. And talking about escaping blows, there is no parry
mechanics in Brave: instead, you
perform a swift escape move that will temporarily shield you from enemies’
attacks and can sometimes be a life-saver, especially during boss fights.
There is an
ever-so-slight RPG element at work in Brave,
which takes the form of upgrading your equipment and learning new abilities.
Equipment upgrades are scattered through the game world and can be found in
chests, while new abilities can be acquired between levels. Instead of relying
on good ol’ level-grinding, Brave
lets you first collect golden orbs in the levels, either by opening chests or
by slaughtering enemies (this is interestingly referred to as “purifying”
them), then offers you to exchange the collected orbs for various abilities.
You can purchase upgrades and new attacks for your sword and bow, as well as
abilities that will improve your health and recovery. While this purchasing
system with orbs acting as currency may seem like an odd design choice, it
introduces a pleasant modicum of customization in a game that remains very
linear at its core, allowing you to either focus solely on your favourite
abilities or to ravenously buy them all, by replaying former levels to collect
more orbs if need be. Not only that, but it also gives the possibility to tweak
the difficulty level. Brave is a
fairly easy game by default, but can be made significantly harder if, say, you
choose to stick to the basic equipment provided at the beginning of the game
and to avoid purchasing some specific upgrades like the Health upgrades or the
one that allows you to fire several arrows at once.
Despite all
that goodness, Brave has a flaw that
is very difficult to ignore: it’s criminally short, clocking at only a couple
of hours. I nearly cleared it in one go the first time I played it, and
actually forced myself to stop and resume my run the next day, not wanting to
face the crushing disappointment of finishing a game the very day I started it.
However, this shortness is compensated by a huge replay value. Brave is a game that can be replayed
over and over and remain enticing by virtue of its top-notch physics, beautiful
graphics and gorgeous music. It’s a sweet treat that is perfect for a quick,
fast-paced gaming fix—and let’s face it, games like that are necessary in the
gaming landscape and provide a much-needed balance with 70-hours long titles. I
actually replayed Brave a good number
of times after my first run and found myself enjoying it more and more, and it
pleases me greatly to know that I can come back to it anytime when I crave a short
yet fulfilling gaming session.
All in all,
Brave is a game that certainly
doesn’t revolutionize the gaming world, but rather reuses a batch of
tried-and-tested ideas and seems content to snuggle into a fairly classic formula. However, it does so with style and gusto and manages to offer a highly
cohesive and enjoyable gaming experience, short but sweet. I would absolutely
recommend this game to any adventure game and/or Hack-and-Slash aficionado,
especially since it’s possible to find very cheap copies nowadays. And now, I’m
going to indulge myself with yet another run of Brave, and maybe another one after that. Thanks for reading, and be
my guest anytime!
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