Today we are going to take a look at Celeste. This action platformer from Matt Makes Games Inc. promises a narrative driven single player adventure inspired by the games of old with a great story and amazing characters. Whether it can deliver on these promises is the question we will try to answer today. Celeste is available on Steam for 19 € and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.
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Video Review
Text Review
When I first initially saw Celeste in the Steam store, I sort of glanced over it. You know… It looked just like another pixel art platformer and I have seen tons and tons of those and usually, they were quite average at best. But then I started to hear about Celeste from my friends and read about it online. Then I decided to give a try myself. And I haven’t regretted it.
Gameplay
So let’s start with the gameplay as we usually do. Celeste at its core is a pretty simple game. The amount of mechanics at your disposal doesn’t really seem that huge. You can move, you can jump, you can dash and you can climb. That’s really about it. BUT! There a huge variety of ways you can use these mechanics to actually traverse the levels. And with every chapter you finish, new and new mechanics get introduced. Let me give you an example. As you progress you will encounter these balls that if you jump into, they will spit you out in the direction you are aiming in. And there are more of these mechanics inside each chapter that get introduced. I’m not gonna claim I loved all of them, for sure not, I especially grew to hate one of the last ones where you collect a feather and it allows you to essentially fly for a moment. But that really wasn’t the fault of the game, it was more my fault for being bad with a controller.
I do have two complaints about these mechanics that are introduced throughout the chapters. They aren’t explained particularly well. Some of them don’t really need it, as they are fairly obvious. Like springs for example. What would you expect a spring to do other than spring you away? But I, for example, had a huge problem getting through one section of a chapter when I needed to use the feather to get over it. I was for once doing fine navigating through the maze it required me to go through but the feather kept wearing off before I got far enough to jump to safety. I actually had to look at a walk-through video and when I watched it, it seemed to me that he was moving much quicker and getting much further than I was. Turns out you need to be constantly pushing in the direction you want to be moving in to get that full speed. But that’s never mentioned anywhere.
The other complaint I have about the mechanics that apart from the very last chapter, you never get to see a combination of them. And even the last chapter it isn’t like you have to combine two or more mechanics together, you are just essentially replaying small sections of the previous chapters, again using each mechanic separately.
But the thing is… You don’t really care when you are playing. The controls feel incredibly tight, even in situations where you are being purposefully disrupted, for example by winds, you can always precisely plan where you will land and if you don’t land there, you can’t blame anyone but yourself. And even if I grew to hate some of the mechanics, I could never blame the game for being unfair, it was just me being bad.
So those are essentially the mechanics without spoiling the fun of the game. I hope. Let’s now take a look at the length of the game. Celeste has 7 basic story chapters and one extra chapter for you to bit into once you finish it and collect specific “keys” in the basic story chapters. But that is not all. Each of the chapters has a B-Side (you know, like on an old-school cassette) that features the same mechanics, but ramped up to insane difficulty. Insane at least for me. But if you are for example a person who likes “kaizo” levels from Mario Maker, you will feel totally at home here, as these levels require extremely precise jump, extremely precise timing and extreme patience and concentration to beat.
These B-Side don’t unlock for you just for beating the chapter though, you need to find the B-Sides inside the chapters to unlock them. This adds a bit of grinding part to the game because if you want to unlock all of them, you need to fully explore the levels, not just follow the quickest path to the end. And while doing this exploring you might want to collect the strawberries that are located around the levels. Not that they serve any real purpose, but they usually require a bit of skill to collect, giving you the option to practice the mechanics.
I managed to finish the main story in just two minutes under eight hours, but I haven’t dabbled in any of the B-Sides nor the extra chapter that unlocks after you finish the game. That’s not really the worst value proposition for 20 bucks, but it’s also not the best. But depending on whether you want to do the B-Sides and how much exploring you want to do in the game and also depending on how good you are (I ended with 1947 deaths) you will either get more or less value than I did. I’d estimate that most players will probably get around 10 hours of fun and that pretty good.
So… while I do have a few gripes against the mechanics, especially against the way they are presented and not at all explained to you, I did enjoy Celeste very much. Mechanically its great and if you love hard platformers, you will certainly fall in love. One last thing that should be mentioned is the fact that Celeste has features obviously tailored to speedrunners. And if you are a fan or even participant in that community, you’ll love it even more.
Graphics
So we have talked about how the gameplay feels but there more to a game than just how it plays, even if we sometimes like to pretend like gameplay is all that matters. And even though it is the most important feature of a game, the graphics do certainly play a role in the game’s enjoyability. So the graphics of Celeste. Just look at the video guys! The game is gorgeous! It features the all so popular pixel art look, but with very vibrant colors thrown everywhere! And I seriously wish I could create pixel art of this quality. And yes, I do dabble in making pixel art occasionally.
The art style manages to be its own thing while looking nostalgic and that’s quite the feat. Obviously if you are a person who looks for triple-A graphics only in his game then Celeste will not appeal to you, but if you aren’t a graphics whore you will quickly learn to give credit where credit is due as Celeste is already a contender for one of the most beautiful games of 2018 in my book.
Story
Another, pretty surprisingly for the genre, big part of Celeste is the story. As always, I will try to avoid spoilers, but essentially you are playing as Madeline (or a character of your naming). A girl who decided she will climb a mountain just to prove that she can do. And, pretty unfortunately for her, she decided to climb Mount Celeste, this weird ass mountain that can manifest many many different and weird things. And as much as I didn’t like the story in the beginning, as the characters, especially Madeline, didn’t appeal to me at all, I actually grew to like it in the end.
Without spoiling much, Madeline starts out as a pretty typical millennial. But over the course of the game, she does actually evolve into a person who I‘d say I could potentially hang out. If you are going to play the game for the story, don‘t just look at it at face value, be sure to try to look a bit deeper into it and be patient as it takes a bit of time to actually get rolling.
Music
Now onto the music in Celeste. And, it‘s great. I especially love the fact that the B-Sides do have their own special soundtrack, sort of continuing in that „fantasy“ that they are the other side of a cassette tape. And while it isn‘t the type of the soundtrack I‘d put into my music library to listen to outside of the game, it honestly is one of the best.
Performance
Performance-wise Celeste ran like a hot knife through butter. I haven‘t experienced a single crash or a bug.
Conclusion
So… in conclusion: Celeste is an awesome and hard platformer. Just as it advertises. If you are a person who likes platformers and challenges you should certainly put Celeste into your gaming library. And if you are a person who likes speedruns and/or kaizo levels from Mario Maker, you probably already have it in your library, but if by chance you don‘t, put it there right now! The story, graphics, and music only increase the enjoyment you will get out of the game, though you might feel like it takes too long to get going, in the end, it is worth it. The value is also pretty nice, especially if you are a completionist, though if you are not, you might want to wait for a small sale.
So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider up-voting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.
Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page