Celeste
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
This was the first time I had played Celeste, so I have nothing to get nostalgic about here. I first became aware of this game a few years ago when I had read some positive reviews for it online. As soon as I saw the game’s old-school graphics and presentation I knew I’d have to check it out someday. Well, that mythical someday finally came.
Side note: this was the last game I rented for GameFly before canceling my subscription, so I will return to attempting to work through my giant backlog of games very shortly.
Story:
Celeste starts out as the simple story of a girl named Madeline who is attempting to climb a daunting and dangerous mountain. As Madeline progresses up the mountain, she encounters a colorful cast of characters including Theo – an explorer also attempting to climb the mountain, Granny – who lives at the base of the mountain and seems to have some type of connection with it, Mr. Oshiro – a man who used to own a hotel on the mountain and seems to be in denial that his business has fallen apart, and “Part of Me” – a mysterious mirror personality of Madeline who attempts to sabotage her climb at every opportunity.
The deeper you get into the game, the more it becomes apparent that the mountain has some type of supernatural qualities attributed to it. “Part of Me” is literally part of Madeline – her insecurity come to life. Theo’s personal demons have also come to life to make their climb more difficult. After some soul searching conversations with Granny and Theo, Madeline decides to take control of her insecurities and work hand-in-hand with her mirror self to make it to the top of the mountain.
Madeline and her friends celebrate this achievement by eating some cherry pie. The end!
What I got out of this game’s storyline was that it teaches a nice, heartfelt lesson about conquering your personal demons and insecurities. Don’t just shove them aside and try to forget them. Instead, own them and use the experiences you’ve gained to make you a stronger person.
It’s a fun, quaint little story. I enjoyed it, for the most part. For this type of side-scrolling game it was 100% appropriate. Nothing too deep or groundbreaking, but still memorable at the same time. And it seemed to match the theme of the visuals and the music very well.
There is more to the game’s story that you can find in its DLC, but honestly I found the DLC too absurdly difficult for me and not worth the hassle of playing, even to see what happened with the game’s story.
Gameplay:
Prepare to die. A lot.
If you don’t like challenging, often frustrating 2D platforming I can save you the time and effort by telling you that you won’t like Celeste.
The basic gameplay premise is pretty simple. You don’t attack, you don’t fight anything. All you are going to find yourself doing is exploring and navigating countless platforming challenges. Sounds pretty simple, but in reality it is a lot tougher than it sounds. You start out with some very basic abilities and you learn more as you progress deeper into the game. Basic moves include jumping, double jumping, dashing forward, and climbing on walls. Each stage has a designated beginning and end location. You can head straight for the level exit or you can take your time to explore all the branching paths and collect hard to reach items (strawberries). These strawberries don’t really do anything to help you as you play – they mainly just add an extra layer of challenge to each game screen while also slightly affecting the ending cinematic depending on how many of them you have collected. Collecting certain pre-set numbers of strawberries earns you PSN trophies as well.
What makes the game tough is all of the challenges it is constantly throwing at you. That strawberry you see in the upper left corner of the screen may look easy to nab, but to get it you have to climb up a wall, time your jump so you land on a moving platform, jump to another wall you have to climb up, jump away from the wall and back to it in order to avoid some spikes jutting out of it, jump to another wall, slide down it, dash over some spikes on the ground, wall jump back and forth between two pillars, nab the strawberry in mid-air, and make it back to safe ground without dying. Oh, did I mention that one hit kills you in this game? Well, it does. Even do so much as touch a spike or an enemy and you die. Fall off the screen and you die. Pretty much do anything and you die.
The first few stages of the game were pretty easy to deal with. It was challenging, but not overwhelmingly so. I still felt like I could beat the game as long as I stayed persistent. The deeper I got into the game, the more difficult it became, throwing more and more new challenges my way. Wind that pushes you back. Floating fish you must dash into to trigger an explosion that will fling you in (hopefully) your desired direction. Platforms that crumble and fall as you grab onto them. Springs that launch you into the air. Jellyfish that you use as hang gliders.
No matter how good of a player you think you are – you are going to die a lot as you play this game. I think I died over 200 times on each stage of the game. To make things even harder, each stage has a “B-side” that is infinitely more difficult than it is originally. I barely, barely was able to make it through even stage one’s B-side. Luckily, you don’t have to do this in order to complete the base game.
Once you finish the game, you unlock its free DLC. This basically extends the story a bit, telling you what happened after the events of the main game. I started playing through these extra stages to find that they were harder than shit. As difficult as the main game was, it had NOTHING on these extra stages. And to access these extra stages you have to collect the hidden heart icon in each of the previous stages. Using an online guide I was able to do this quite easily. But once you hit the halfway point of the DLC, you have to have collected ALL of the hidden hearts so far in the game, including the ones from each stage’s B-side. Um, no. Fuck that. I was NOT doing that. I could barely make it through this extra stage as it was. The fact that I had to go back and play through each B-side (when I could barely even complete stage one’s B-side) was something that I was simply not willing to do.
I had finished the main story. I had watched the credits roll. In my mind, I considered Celeste to be a beaten game. I put it back in its envelope and sent it back to GameFly.
Graphics:
Celeste has a really charming look to it. I love the pixel based graphics and the fun lighting and atmospheric visual effects.
That said, this game is a weird combination of looking both primitive and advanced at the same time. Sure, the graphics may be a bit basic at first glance, but they work. The colorful, dream-like aspect to the visuals are what put it over the top in my opinion. I’m finding it really hard to put into words what made Celeste so visually appealing to me. While most of this game looks like it could have been made on the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis, there are moments of brilliance that make it clear that those systems could never have handled what Celeste tries to do. The look of this game falls somewhere between 16 and 32 bit. 24 bit?
Who knows? All I know is that I just really enjoyed the look and feel of this game.
Sound:
Celeste’s music and sound effects really shine through as well. This game doesn’t attempt to do too much in the sound department. It is subtle yet effective at the same time. The music, in fact the whole tone of the game’s sound palette, always adjusts flawlessly to what is happening on screen. It is the perfect marriage between the graphics and the music that make this game such a delight to soak in atmospherically. Maybe neither aspect would be too horribly impressive on their own, but when combined… it works. It just works.
Overall:
If you think it sounds like I had mixed feelings about this game, you would be right. I love the game’s visual style. I love its atmosphere. I love the story. There is so much to love about this game’s presentation and its look and feel. Growing up in the 8 and 16-bit era, this game tickles my nostalgia bone in many different ways.
Is the game actually fun to play, though? To me, that is its biggest question mark. As good as the game looks or sounds, it is all for naught if the game isn’t fun to play. I found myself having an okay time with this game. Just an okay time. Nothing more, nothing less.
I liked the challenge of the game when I felt it was a fair challenge. Some of the later levels and DEFINITELY the B-sides and the DLC are not fair challenges. They are just absurd. I got stuck for an hour on one of the game’s screens while playing the DLC. In this stage, you have to jump on a series of spiked platforms that begin to fall as soon as you come into contact with them. You then have to jump up and around the platforms as they are falling and race to the bottom of them before they fall off the screen in order to bump into a spring on the bottom corner of them that launches you to the next falling platform. You have to be accurate down to the very pixel. If not – you die and have to do it all over again. The next screen was just as bad. By this point it was literally taking me an hour to get through each screen of the game. I was not having ANY fun whatsoever.
Fortunately, the main game isn’t nearly as bad as the DLC. There were times I’d get stuck or I’d end up dying dozens (if not hundreds) of times, but I always felt like the challenge was doable. The stages where you have to use your brain and plan out exactly what you have to do and when are some of the highlights of the game.
All in all, however, Celeste’s gameplay really wasn’t my cup of tea. You can only jump and climb and avoid obstacles a certain number of time before it starts to get tiresome. I feel as if the ability to fight would have added so much to this game. Maybe some boss battles. I understand that that isn’t necessarily what Celeste is, and would fundamentally make it a different kind of game altogether. But it would have added some depth to the title that I feel it is sorely lacking.
By my second day of playing this game, I was tired of it and ready to move on. I kept going for the story and the graphics, but as far as the gameplay goes I was only going through the motions. That is not a good thing.
Okay, now it sounds like I hated the game. I truly didn’t. It’s just… very complicated in a way I’m not quite sure I know how to describe. I’ll just fall back on my whole “this game is okay” spiel from earlier in the review. The graphics, music, storyline, and presentation will bump this up slightly from your standard C grade.
Can I recommend Celeste to you? I think it definitely should be played, yes. Can I guarantee you that you’ll like it? That’s another story altogether.
Final Score:
C+
If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:
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