Game Debate #186: Celeste

[Khromak | 768]

Hey, I have a tattoo from this game!

I voted 9/10, it's an excellent game and anyone with even a passing interest in platformers absolutely must play it, can't recommend it enough. Love the art style, music, story, characters, it's just a beautiful game. The difficult is also, as others said, right there. It's easy enough to clear if you just want to say you beat it, but also punishingly difficult if you want a challenge. The secrets are great and well-hidden but mostly intuitive.

I haven't gotten close to completing all the achievements, which I blame on the terrible d-pad on the Switch Pro controller and not my lack of skills.

[Sumez | 2,951]

I already loved most of Maddy Thorson's games, but Celeste is easily one of the better ones she made! My favourite however is still "An Untitled Story" (and it's free, too!)

I'm not too much into precision platformers, but Celeste does a great job at making the genre accessible without compromising much of the core concept.

I really like how it's exactly lenient enough that it never feels stressful. It's pretty much just a series of individual challenges until you get to the end, and each challenge is approachable in one way or another - for example it might be a straight-forward jumping/dashing obstacle, and it's just a question of doing that well enough.
Or maybe it's more cryptic or even a straight up puzzle that you have to figure figure out how to force, and for those, the precision of your execution is usually quite a bit more lax, so you never feel blocked by the game being too difficult, yet there's no way to get through the first time without dying a lot. It really is an extremely well made balance.

What I think the game handles less well is the pacing. The game lets you go through multiple types of terrain with different obstalces and gimmicks to change things up, but usually each sequence of similar gimmick challenges have a tendency to go on for just long enough that they started to wear me out, and then just a bit further again. This is especially true for the "boss fight" sections, which feel like they go on forever!

I think the story is quite moving too, and while there's obviously a thematic connection to the type of game it is, I think it suffers from being completely disconnected from the core game. You basically play a bunch of platforming stages and then watch a short cutscene, rinse and repeat. I think it could have been integrated a lot better.

7/10

Edited January 12 by Sumez

[NostalgicMachine | 235]

Now here's one I've never played, but would love to try!

[RH | 4,903]

Well I watched the first 20 minutes of a long play last night and I can agree this is a very well made game and I can see why platform junkies would rate it highly.

But this game would probably make me rage quit in a way I’ve not done since I was 10 and threw my controller at the TV after my last life and my Mom took the NES away for a week. (True story! lol… good times.)

I just don’t have good tap-timing and precision, and even my muscle-memory has less than perfect timing by a wide margin. I’m glad you guys enjoy it but there’s a reason why I gravitate towards games that give you a bit more time to think through the platforming (like Metroid-style games), modestly generous shmups and old school JRPGs which rarely require twitch-levels of controlling.

If I had played this game this might be an odd case of a 0/10 for me based off of Reed’s descriptions (hyperbole, assumed) but I can still understand why, for many, this could be a 10/10.  It’s definitely a well made game and worthy of Indy awards.  Regardless, this is also a game that for me as a gamer, nearly 100%, I’m not into this.

Edited January 12 by RH

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

Well I guess I'm interested after all the praise.  Downloaded from PS+.  Now all I have to do is actually open it up. 

[Sumez | 2,951]

1 hour ago, RH said:

But this game would probably make me rage quit in a way I’ve not done since I was 10 and threw my controller at the TV after my last life and my Mom took the NES away for a week. (True story! lol… good times.)

I just don’t have good tap-timing and precision, and even my muscle-memory has less than perfect timing by a wide margin.

IMO what makes Celeste so enjoyable is exactly that it's *not* like this. See my post above for me going into details about that balance.

Of course there are all the extra-hard optional post-game challenges for that stuff, but I didn't even do those, the game is plenty long as it is!

[G-type | 2,482]

I beat the "classic" Celeste for the Pico-8. I have only played a part of the full release but it seems very well done... I just don't always have the patience for high difficulty platforming.

Edited January 12 by G-type

[RH | 4,903]

10 minutes ago, Sumez said:

IMO what makes Celeste so enjoyable is exactly that it's *not* like this. See my post above for me going into details about that balance.

Of course there are all the extra-hard optional post-game challenges for that stuff, but I didn't even do those, the game is plenty long as it is!

I got to the part in the video where the mirror broke and without spoiling the game, I knew right then, I was was out.  You have no idea how many attempts it would take me to get from there to the phone booth.

I've admitted this in the past--I'm not good at games and it's been a tension my whole life, compared to how much I love them.  But the truth is, I'm good at games.  Just not this type of game.  Fast react times, reasonably perfect reflexes.  I mean, I get my fill of that in the weekly NES competitions and that's fun because I know that any given game is something I'm choosing to only play for a week.

But a game like this, if I got the notion to start it, I'd want to finish it and there's nothing more frustrating to me than buying a game and getting to a point where I dump 1-2 hours at one place to try to beat a boss or get past a stage and I just can't do it.  That whole mirror bit, that's where I knew I'd be lost.  It's too fast.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,530]

2 hours ago, JamesRobot said:

Well I guess I'm interested after all the praise.  Downloaded from PS+.  Now all I have to do is actually open it up. 

Incidentally, your backlog post is still incomplete...

[CT | 91]

I put it as a 9/10. 

At first, I was dissuaded due to the hype, and I waited awhile to play it. But about 1/2 way through the game I could see why it's awesome.

It can be challenging, but it is doable.  Checkpoints are generous, giving the "just one more try" mechanic like Super Meat Boy. Surprisingly great story. Awesome music. Lots of additional content if you want more of a challenge.

Edited January 12 by CT

[koifish | 556]

14 hours ago, sp1nz said:

It's one of the most known/popular games in the spaces I'm in, so when people say they've heard about it for being a Switch game or have just heard about it in passing it just throws me for a loop. Like in my mind it's maybe one step removed from Cuphead's popularity as an indie game. Maybe that part of my comment was stupid but I just got that air from couple comments in the thread already and felt like putting it out there.

Anyway appreciate anyone's opinion/experience being different than mine.

oh I see. Well, I definitely knew of celeste but had barely any interaction with it. I haven't kept up with new releases regularly since probably 2013, and basically stopped following game news entirely by 2018 or so, and as such I'm not privy to newer stuff much.

I distinctly understand that phenomenon though; I call it "subculture famous", when everybody in a subculture knows of a thing relevant to that culture but it's almost unknown otherwise. You could also use it to describe instagram fame, where people can be famous and known by millions, and yet the vast majority has no idea who they are. People here are excellent examples of subculture famous ideas. For proof, just go ask anybody who doesn't play NES games about Journey to Silius or Rockin' Cats. We all know them pretty readily but the average person has no clue. That's subculture famous in a nutshell.

Now I am curious; How do you follow indie games? I have overlooked them for the most part, but I also struggle to sort through them or even find them since they are by definition difficult to find. Curious of your info channels.

[wongojack | 214]

9 minutes ago, koifish said:

oh I see. Well, I definitely knew of celeste but had barely any interaction with it. I haven't kept up with new releases regularly since probably 2013, and basically stopped following game news entirely by 2018 or so, and as such I'm not privy to newer stuff much.

I distinctly understand that phenomenon though; I call it "subculture famous", when everybody in a subculture knows of a thing relevant to that culture but it's almost unknown otherwise. You could also use it to describe instagram fame, where people can be famous and known by millions, and yet the vast majority has no idea who they are. People here are excellent examples of subculture famous ideas. For proof, just go ask anybody who doesn't play NES games about Journey to Silius or Rockin' Cats. We all know them pretty readily but the average person has no clue. That's subculture famous in a nutshell.

Now I am curious; How do you follow indie games? I have overlooked them for the most part, but I also struggle to sort through them or even find them since they are by definition difficult to find. Curious of your info channels.

I struggle to follow as well, but my ham-fisted approach is to look at the "Best of" lists at the end of the year.  Best of PC lists for youtubers and other online sites will always include indie titles.

Another thing that I do is watch the Humble Bundles very carefully.  Whenever there's a new bundle of indie titles (get 9 games for $12), I will look them up.  A lot of times, they are including indie darlings that are very highly reviewed.  I scoop those up pretty regularly since I can luckily afford them.  When one of those "best of" games hits the bundle, I've added it and a bunch of other indies to my library.  I find I acquire a lot of the critically acclaimed indie games this way.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

14 hours ago, Brickman said:

What made this game so good is that the story really integrated well with the platforming. All those deaths really made me feel like I was struggling climbing the mountain with Madeline as opposed to the very generic story in past platformers.

If people aren't into platformers then that's

I've played a decent amount of platformers with deaths that stack up quickly and this is one of the few that feel like it progressed the story in a meaningful way. One of the others was the Steeemerz homebrew where similarly you climbed up a building to stop the baddy and then back down to stop him again. 

[koifish | 556]

14 hours ago, Brickman said:

Not sure what you mean by this. We're still in the 2000's  unless you mean early 2000's which wouldn't be right because this game was released in 2018. Also the game has more actions than double jump and wall jump. And the controls are extremely tight, probably some of the best I've ever experienced in platforming.

What made this game so good is that the story really integrated well with the platforming. All those deaths really made me feel like I was struggling climbing the mountain with Madeline as opposed to the very generic story in past platformers.

If people aren't into platformers then that's fair enough, they won't enjoy this game at all. But anyone who loves platformer games like SMB, Ninja Gaiden, Donkey Kong Country,  Battletoads etc. they definitely owe it to themselves to give this game a go. It can be a moderate level difficulty platformer all the way up to one of the most difficult platformers ever made depending how deep you want to get in to the game.

yeah, I mean 2000s as in 2000 to 2009. Wasn't aware people referred to the entire century as the 2000s. Do people now do that for the 20th century? I've only ever heard people say 1900s to refer to the time at or around the turn of the century.

Anyway, it was when gamemaker was first getting really big in my circles and I remember tons and tons of games like this, where you single screen platform in a bunch of spikes and obstacles and shit and just keep retrying the same screen until you win. I Wanna Be The Guy was the most infamous, but overall they weren't so bad I guess, tedious is my main descriptor. The problem was there were just so many of them that they started to run together. Sort of fun when I was younger but I don't have interest now. Moreover they are tiring. I'd rather play something cool like castlevania, that keeps things fresh with new ideas introduced through progressive stages, and moreover, that rewards mastery of technique without being obnoxious about the precise particularities. The doublewalls (forgive my shorthand) were eventually a process like was described by a previous poster for super meat boy; just sit and grind the same stupid screen because I didn't press whatever button combination at the perfect frame timing, and you just keep doing it piece by piece until you have the pattern down, only to have to do it again on the next screen. Things like that, like kaizo Mario hacks, it's a crap game to me. If I wanted to obsessively grind one pattern of extremely time-specidic and overly exacting and obnoxiously demanding inputs forever, all until I clear bullshit stage 437, and only just to go onto bullshit stage 438 and do it it all again, then I would rather just play a rhythm game, where at least you get the fun of a great song out of it (and a much more amusing showpiece for future arcade onlookers), or really at that point I should just learn an instrument, a far more useful observation of obsessively practicing the same inputs over and over. And yes, I realize this description oversimplifies music, and doesn't account for jazz at all, it's just how exacting games like doublewalls make me feel. They give the distinct feeling that I should be using my time for something more useful. Like I said, I played some of these back in the day and they were okay, but overall I think they are boring, and the ones that are stupidly specific about how you beat them are just trash IMO.

With all that said, I was surprised to learn from this thread that the person who made celeste also made an untitled story; that was one of these games that I remember being better than the average. I never finished it because I recall it getting boring halfway through. I don't think i would like celeste and would probably quit it too, based on descriptions here. I don't get the feeling that it would be enough divorced from my opinions about meat grinder platformers for me to not get irritated by it, and it would probably irk me that you had to do the stupid grinder shit to 100% it. And I don't give a shit about story in games, so there's no reason for me to play it just for that. I'd rather have no story period, which is why I stick to the games that I do. Maybe I'm mistaken to say so on this game (very very rarely, I do enjoy a game story) but I'm not interested right now. I admit my knowledge could be mostly based on old video I saw when it first came out, and it's mostly a response of "oh it looks like X, pass" and I could find that I am wrong. But looking at it right now and understanding what goes into it, I expect it is a hard pass and that I will live happily having never played it. If somebody wants to send me a crack sometime then maybe I'll try it but that is what it would probably take for me to give a rat's ass.

correction: I remember now from above posts that I did play the pico 8 game once. It was unimpressive imo. Also my post above is a bit more edgy than I usually post, hopefully it doesn't bother you too much. If it's indie platformers, the only choice that comes to mind for me is La-Mulana and Cave Story.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,530]

38 minutes ago, koifish said:

Now I am curious; How do you follow indie games

Online osmosis.  Bought Minit yesterday for $2.50 because @Gloves had me intrigued about it once upon a time.  My backlog list has Firewatch and The Witness because they're all over the internet as milestone games of the 2010s.  Isaac, Cave Story, and Axiom Verge are 3 of the first games I bought for Switch because they're all over lists of the best launch(ish) titles, not to mention all the buzz over Isaac back in the day. @DefaultGen's ravings have me interested in Cruelty Squad.  Etc.

And then I of course hope that this debate series has people considering new games.  Dunno about it working though, we seem like an especially stubborn bunch.  "Never, never" is always a popular choice 

 

[koifish | 556]

Just now, Reed Rothchild said:

Online osmosis.  Bought Minit yesterday for $2.50 because @Gloves had me intrigued about it once upon a time.  My backlog list has Firewatch and The Witness because they're all over the internet as milestone games of the 2010s.  Isaac, Cave Story, and Axiom Verge are 3 of the first games I bought for Switch because they're all over lists of the best launch(ish) titles.  @DefaultGen's ravings have me interested in Cruelty Squad.  Etc.

 

Interesting, maybe I don't spend enough time online anymore. Maybe it is for the best though; listing off indie darlings just makes me tired from reading lol. Too many games and too many life obligations to worry about not playing this or that, and bundles get me frustrated. I used to get humble bundles, for example, and what I found was that I got a bunch of trash I would never actually play. Come to think of it, I think I bought their COVID bundle in 2020 and I don't think I have ever installed or downloaded any part of it XD I learned from touching fire to not do it anymore obviously that is a me problem though, not their problem for providing it.

[Brickman | 3,986]

10 minutes ago, koifish said:

yeah, I mean 2000s as in 2000 to 2009. Wasn't aware people referred to the entire century as the 2000s. Do people now do that for the 20th century? I've only ever heard people say 1900s to refer to the time at or around the turn of the century.

Anyway, it was when gamemaker was first getting really big in my circles and I remember tons and tons of games like this, where you single screen platform in a bunch of spikes and obstacles and shit and just keep retrying the same screen until you win. I Wanna Be The Guy was the most infamous, but overall they weren't so bad I guess, tedious is my main descriptor. The problem was there were just so many of them that they started to run together. Sort of fun when I was younger but I don't have interest now. Moreover they are tiring. I'd rather play something cool like castlevania, that keeps things fresh with new ideas introduced through progressive stages, and moreover, that rewards mastery of technique without being obnoxious about the precise particularities. The doublewalls (forgive my shorthand) were eventually a process like was described by a previous poster for super meat boy; just sit and grind the same stupid screen because I didn't press whatever button combination at the perfect frame timing, and you just keep doing it piece by piece until you have the pattern down, only to have to do it again on the next screen. Things like that, like kaizo Mario hacks, it's a crap game to me. If I wanted to obsessively grind one pattern of extremely time-specidic and overly exacting and obnoxiously demanding inputs forever, all until I clear bullshit stage 437, and only just to go onto bullshit stage 438 and do it it all again, then I would rather just play a rhythm game, where at least you get the fun of a great song out of it (and a much more amusing showpiece for future arcade onlookers), or really at that point I should just learn an instrument, a far more useful observation of obsessively practicing the same inputs over and over. And yes, I realize this description oversimplifies music, and doesn't account for jazz at all, it's just how exacting games like doublewalls make me feel. They give the distinct feeling that I should be using my time for something more useful. Like I said, I played some of these back in the day and they were okay, but overall I think they are boring, and the ones that are stupidly specific about how you beat them are just trash IMO.

With all that said, I was surprised to learn from this thread that the person who made celeste also made an untitled story; that was one of these games that I remember being better than the average. I never finished it because I recall it getting boring halfway through. I don't think i would like celeste and would probably quit it too, based on descriptions here. I don't get the feeling that it would be enough divorced from my opinions about meat grinder platformers for me to not get irritated by it, and it would probably irk me that you had to do the stupid grinder shit to 100% it. And I don't give a shit about story in games, so there's no reason for me to play it just for that. I'd rather have no story period, which is why I stick to the games that I do. Maybe I'm mistaken to say so on this game (very very rarely, I do enjoy a game story) but I'm not interested right now. I admit my knowledge could be mostly based on old video I saw when it first came out, and it's mostly a response of "oh it looks like X, pass" and I could find that I am wrong. But looking at it right now and understanding what goes into it, I expect it is a hard pass and that I will live happily having never played it. If somebody wants to send me a crack sometime then maybe I'll try it but that is what it would probably take for me to give a rat's ass.

correction: I remember now from above posts that I did play the pico 8 game once. It was unimpressive imo. Also my post above is a bit more edgy than I usually post, hopefully it doesn't bother you too much. If it's indie platformers, the only choice that comes to mind for me is La-Mulana and Cave Story.

Fair enough maybe it’s not for you. Not everyone is into platformers. I really just wanted to point out that this isn’t a super meat boy clone like you and others are trying to make out.

People in here are giving their opinions on a game they have only watched a YouTube video of which is just crazy in my book. Flicking through a game on YT is nothing like experiencing the game. 

[wongojack | 214]

1 hour ago, koifish said:

Interesting, maybe I don't spend enough time online anymore. Maybe it is for the best though; listing off indie darlings just makes me tired from reading lol. Too many games and too many life obligations to worry about not playing this or that, and bundles get me frustrated. I used to get humble bundles, for example, and what I found was that I got a bunch of trash I would never actually play. Come to think of it, I think I bought their COVID bundle in 2020 and I don't think I have ever installed or downloaded any part of it XD I learned from touching fire to not do it anymore obviously that is a me problem though, not their problem for providing it.

For the bundles, I just accepted that I'll never play them all.  I think of it as more like offering a tip to charity than actually buying the game.  This way, I have a lot of these games in the library that I can go back to if I ever decide I do want to play them, and all I've lost is a few bucks thrown to a good cause.  I also, always adjust my donation amount to give the max possible to whatever charity they are featuring.

EDIT - not sure if this was already mentioned in the thread or not, but Celeste is actually in a bundle right now:  Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 (pay what you want and help charity) (humblebundle.com)

Edited January 12 by wongojack

[koifish | 556]

16 minutes ago, wongojack said:

For the bundles, I just accepted that I'll never play them all.  I think of it as more like offering a tip to charity than actually buying the game.  This way, I have a lot of these games in the library that I can go back to if I ever decide I do want to play them, and all I've lost is a few bucks thrown to a good cause.  I also, always adjust my donation amount to give the max possible to whatever charity they are featuring.

not a bad idea; I usually just give 100% directly to a charity and turn down their gifts as it cuts into their margins. The process is still good if you get something out of it and i don't mean to say it is not, it's just me. I'm a weirdo in that having excess stuff becomes bothersome, which is the real reason I turn down tshirts and stickers and tote bags and stuff. I'm a bit stranger though, because for me, any purchases, even digital ones, become clutter or waste in my mind if I am not generally using them. I once collected often, but now find it specifically irritating to have things in my possession that go untouched. They're just burdensome to me. Even with digital things, which don't take up any more space physically, bother in this way. I often go and delete things that are sitting on a hard drive for too long, and I've long hated that steam won't let you sell or trade away games you no longer want, because it bothers me that they exist in my library (which of course is all because it hurts their margins, and would give people too much of an illusion of actual ownership, but that's a subject for a different thread). That's another part of why I stopped doing it.

1 hour ago, Brickman said:

Fair enough maybe it’s not for you. Not everyone is into platformers. I really just wanted to point out that this isn’t a super meat boy clone like you and others are trying to make out.

People in here are giving their opinions on a game they have only watched a YouTube video of which is just crazy in my book. Flicking through a game on YT is nothing like experiencing the game. 

depends on the game for me. Years ago I realized that due to being around long enough, and due to having played enough games, that I can tell how something plays just by watching it and know if I would like it or not. Maybe if it is something truly different from anything you have played before, then it will be hard to get from a video, but the vast majority of games barely step away from conventions established now decades ago. I argue that a video is all I need to get the gist pretty easily of what it feels like to play a given game, simply because they're only so many variations of a same theme. The only exception that comes to mind is maybe something like Baba is You, and even that is still essentially a puzzle/logic game. I mean, if people couldn't get a good idea of how a game might play from a video, then why would anyone watch game trailers or other release info? In fact, I might even argue that the number of trailers for games that show no gameplay and instead show pretty images of the characters and things like that are designed precisely because they know that too many can see what a game will play like from watching and will then know that it is not for them. At least use some intrigue to get them hooked up front before you hit them with yet another follow-on! That's one thing I like about indie games in my experience; They typically don't have the budget for a bunch of nonsense fluff videos and so they just get to the point. But anyhow, yes, I don't think it's strange at all to be able to make a good judgment of what a game will be like to play from a video, or else gameplay trailers would not exist and no one would bother showing off a game at all.

Edited January 12 by koifish

[rdrunner | 422]

10/10 - No brainer score for me, having just played this.  I can't remember the last time a game pulled me in and didn't let go the way Celeste did.

Yes, it's hard.  Yes, it's probably only fun if you don't mind dying a lot.  But I will also say this: It's fair.

The controls are perfect, the level design is top notch, and the pacing is about as good as anyone can expect.  Each screen is like a training session.  You always have exactly the skills you need to overcome what's in front of you, and if you need a measuring stick for how much you've learned, just go back and replay a completed chapter.  You'll be amazed how much easier it feels the second time through!

One other thing: Despite the obvious similarities to Super Meat Boy, I think Celeste is really its own thing and is way better for it.

Edited January 14 by rdrunner

[G-type | 2,482]

On 1/12/2024 at 3:03 PM, wongojack said:

For the bundles, I just accepted that I'll never play them all.  I think of it as more like offering a tip to charity than actually buying the game.  This way, I have a lot of these games in the library that I can go back to if I ever decide I do want to play them, and all I've lost is a few bucks thrown to a good cause.  I also, always adjust my donation amount to give the max possible to whatever charity they are featuring.

I had bought this game for the switch, but later picked up as a part of a bundle that included 1700 games... I'm sure I'll never see more than 1% of the games in that bundle.

[wongojack | 214]

1 hour ago, G-type said:

I had bought this game for the switch, but later picked up as a part of a bundle that included 1700 games... I'm sure I'll never see more than 1% of the games in that bundle.

Those itch.io bundles are hard to manage.  I found this site that kinda helps me search and find things in there:  https://randombundlegame.com/

[koifish | 556]

17 hours ago, G-type said:

I had bought this game for the switch, but later picked up as a part of a bundle that included 1700 games... I'm sure I'll never see more than 1% of the games in that bundle.

1700 games? Is a shovel included?

[G-type | 2,482]

19 hours ago, koifish said:

1700 games? Is a shovel included?

I'm sure there was some junk in there, but I've found plenty of good games to more than justify getting it: Celeste, A Short Hike, oxenfree, 2064 Read only memories, Night of Consumers, Overland, Tonight We Riot, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor. (Celeste and Oxenfree I'd both purchased previously, but I don't mind since its a donation to fundraiser)

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

Started playing Celeste last night with the boy.  Just got through the (first?) dream sequence and I'm really enjoying it.  Can't quite rate it yet but I'm looking at a 7 as it stands on initial impressions.

The platforming is pretty tough but not impossible and the checkpoints are pretty generous. As a modern platformer, it reminds me a lot of Cave Story.  And I'd encourage anyone who enjoys this game to play @Dullahan Software's Nebs N Debs homebrew.  The dash mechanic very similar and lends to some really tight platforming on the NES.