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China Star "Jue Xiao" trial play: not just a two-dimensional "old man ring"

Galaxy

2024-07-27

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Author: Xinghe

Original Contribution

Comment:

Find your own direction in the trend of homogenization

At the third Sony China Star Conference in 2024, the announcement of "Juexiao" was both unexpected and reasonable. After all, we are already familiar with the background of the creation of this project - on the one hand, there are "high-standard two-dimensional games" sweeping the game industry, and on the other hand, there are "Soul-like" games that are very popular among console players. In this environment, a development team that comes from a large-scale commercial project development system and knows how to grasp mature game elements will undoubtedly become one of the best candidates for Sony Interactive Entertainment to seek supply cooperation.

But to be honest, this is also the main reason why I advise everyone to wait and see. To borrow the words of a media teacher in the China Star interview activity - taking the third issue we have seen as an example, "China Star" already has too many "soul-like" games, including pure imitators of the "soul-like" basic framework, and conceptual innovators who boldly integrate local culture. So what should "Juexiao" rely on to stand out?

Sony China Star Program Phase 3

Sony Interactive Entertainment decided to answer this question with "facts". What surprised the media present was that just two hours after the press conference, we gathered in a small room specially prepared by Sony to play the media test version of "Zexiao". The total amount of playable content included in this version directly answered the question we were most curious about - what kind of game is it?

However, before that, we can also roughly understand its advantages from the literal meaning - "Juexiao" is an extremely typical "post-Genshin Impact" era game. It has the most common 3D rendering mode in recent years, a highly versatile UI, a character design direction specializing in certain special "sexual fetishes", and an open map design.

"The Dawn"

The combination of these elements made my first impression of the game "awkward". It's not that there is anything wrong with the game, but it's hard to imagine that a game with a two-dimensional face can have such strong resistance to the roadside soldiers. For this trial play, the "Juexiao" team prepared sufficient game content, from the most basic "open map exploration" to the encounters with soldiers in the wild at any time, to the extremely standard large-scale BOSS battles and puzzle levels operated by special mechanisms... It only took the media present a few dozen minutes to explain the differentiation of the entire project under the "soul-like" category.

Take the battles in Absolute Dawn as an example. I know that I simply summarized its combat experience as "soul-like" at the beginning of the article, which is actually not accurate. A more appropriate description is actually an "action RPG" with a "soul-like" mechanism - at least from what we have experienced, the combat difficulty of Absolute Dawn is definitely not low. Every enemy you encounter can take most of the player's attacks in the form of "blocking". If you don't understand this, even if you are as fierce as a tiger, it will be difficult to cut off the enemy's blood.

The combat design of Absolute Dawn actually has a very obvious tendency. Simply put, they seem to want to apply an inherent rule to all the characters in the game - whether it is the player, the soldier patrolling the intersection, or even the giant monster running wildly in the wilderness, they all have their own "stance slot". And breaking the "stance slot" will bring a long period of stiffness.

As for the methods of breaking the "stance slot", there are actually many ways - continuous accumulation of attacks, just the right defense...

So, is this another "flying knife" game based on "counterattack timing"? That's not entirely true. As you can see from the surface: "Juexiao" is a "two-dimensional game". Although I don't like to generalize a game with complex attributes like this, in today's mainstream game market, it is a "two-dimensional game". And what is the real focus of "two-dimensional games"? It's simple, it's actually the "character" itself.

A "two-dimensional game" that can leave a deep impression on people needs to rely on the characters themselves. Sometimes, these characters are enough to meet the "sexual preferences" of the target audience, and sometimes, the production team has a good enough grasp of 3D. What "Juexiao" does is to bind the gameplay and characters more deeply.

The "stance bar" and "block" are certainly the core of the action scenes in this game, but in addition, it also emphasizes the interaction between "characters". This may sound a bit strange - as an action role-playing game with "open world" and "soul-like" elements, "Zero Dawn" actually allows players to use multiple characters at the same time. As I said before, "Zero Dawn" has a highly versatile UI, including the "character switch key" mapped on the handle's direction keys.

In this game, we experienced the difference between the two characters from attack modules to actual performance by switching back and forth. It is worth affirming that the game does differentiate the performance and actions of different characters, or different weapons - the sword and the gun have completely different attack actions and ranges. Although the two still share the basic rules of "blocking and repelling knives", you can still see the advantages and disadvantages of each in those long-lasting BOSS battles.

However, in this game, there is actually a more important connection between "roles" and gameplay, that is, "cooperation" with more objective damage. During the battle, players can switch roles at the right time to cause higher damage to the target - at least in the short trial period, this has indeed become the most efficient mainstream attack method in "Juexiao".

This extremely "second-level" cooperation method also gave me an interesting guess about the game - is there a possibility that, compared to our earlier expectation of "knife-flicking" based on one character, "Juexiao" actually hopes to improve the entire battle process through the cooperation between many characters?

In fact, this is not a groundless guess. Because according to the information we have obtained so far, the complete form of "Juexiao" will be a work that combines the attributes of "long-term operation" and "multiplayer game". Under this system, "cooperative combat between different characters" will naturally become one of the mainstream gameplay of the game. If so, then "Juexiao" has really found an interesting direction in its category - it is really not as simple as a so-called "secondary old man ring".

Of course, all of this still needs to be based on the smooth production of the game, which is never an easy task, and we will continue to pay attention to it.