23/09/2014

Brave: Surprisingly good



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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