Mask of Mists (PS4)
Mask of Mists might be the first game I’ve played where its most noteworthy feature is how it loads in a new area. After going through a doorway or cave opening and seeing a fairly bland and traditional load screen, Mask of Mists will have the new area load in, but only in a small section a few feet ahead of you. Beyond that is a dark empty void, but near to your character, the space that has loaded in has its color and geometry. In between the color and the blackness though is where things get interesting, as a grey monotone area exists where the color appears to stop almost as if someone had been interrupted while painting it. As the area loads in entirely, you first see the blackness replaced with everything ahead still rendered in grey, but then the color starts to move across the objects to fill them in almost like a magical force is painting in the world ahead.
This method of coloring in the world does not seem to be some loading shortcut or trick since you actually see the color spread through an object rather than an object merely appearing in time with its coloration, and while there is no grounding for this interesting visual effect in the game’s meager story, it is a game that takes place in a magical world based around familiar medieval fantasy trappings. Considering how often you see these load screens and how slow they are, this interesting effect does soften the blow of the frequent gameplay interruptions, but if this design direction was meant to infuse more magic into its world, it is sadly wasted. While there are many areas that pull off a mystical and mysterious look such as the Archmage’s study, various ancient ruins, and the forests with their unusual flora, the entrances are never positioned so you can see this loading effect bring these areas to life. Instead, you’re viewing something like a cave wall, a house’s foyer, or a small stone street illuminated by this artful loading method.
Since this squandered means of loading in an area is Mask of Mists’s most intriguing feature, you have likely already realized that much of the rest of the game isn’t particularly noteworthy or imaginative. The particularly plain plot already presents itself almost like it’s just another job for your unnamed male hero, and while it does emphasize that the disappearance of Archmage Crowl is a bit bigger than your normal work, it’s still almost presented like the kind of smaller quest you’d pick up in a role-playing game rather than something the story is going to be focused around. Your efforts to find him take you to an infected area lightly inhabited by creatures from the Abyss, but the game still remains rather low key throughout, closer to a point and click adventure despite its first-person presentation and the fact you will be dual-wielding a gun and sword to participate in short, easy battles.
The titular Mask of Mists actually isn’t particularly relevant to the plot if you’re going for the more positive ending. This object of power likely has ties to the Archmage’s disappearance, but actually encountering it involves engaging in a secondary quest to collect optional stone masks. If not for the scrolls and documents you find around the place though it could be very easy to completely miss that a mask holds any relevance to the main story since the Abyss seems to color your adventure a bit more.
The player needs to find six dungeons with navigation crystals inside them to reach the Abyss, and while navigating the world or exploring these dungeons, you might encounter one of three enemy types. The slimes appear first and need to get close to bite you, but their bite seems to extend out further than the animation so before you learn that you might take some cheap damage. Beating them is as easy as walking around them a little and waving your sword around, and this technically handles the other two enemy types as well. Some plants that spit slowing gunk at you will sprout from the ground and float around, these projectile-focused enemies again requiring very light dodging to overcome. The tall mushroom men can take a bit longer to kill, particularly because when they’ll burrow into the ground and raise a damaging shield when at half health, but backpedaling and not attacking the shield will keep you safe the whole fight. Besides a final boss that requires a little bit more action to fight though, Mask of Mists’s combat portion barely feels like it adds anything beyond a mild sense of danger when entering a room. Accidentally missing a jump and falling into acid or hitting a moving spike roller feel like they intertwine with the game’s greater focus on movement and puzzle solving, but in general there’s not much peril to be concerned with unless you plunge into the poisonous grasses and don’t take the hint to turn back.
Much like the combat’s lack of energy, getting around in Mask of Mists often feels a little lifeless. A lot of areas you explore are abandoned or only have a smattering of enemies who stay gone once they’re defeated, and the places you have access to only continue to grow while they continue to be relevant to puzzle solving. Mask of Mists enjoys having you traverse its entire exterior area repeatedly to cart some new item to where it needs to be used or utilize some information gained to solve a puzzle elsewhere. There is that mild enjoyment of completing a task and realizing you are now able to overcome some challenge that stumped you elsewhere, but a lot of the time it’s a matter of first seeing something like ground you need to dig up, finding the shovel somewhere far off, and then going back to the earlier area to do the digging. This mostly manifests as lugging inventory around with you rather than realizing a clever use for it, particularly because areas where items can be used don’t allow you to experiment and either work or don’t based on what you have on hand. Keeping track of what still needs to be done can be a little difficult if you spend any time away from the game too, it being easy to get stuck if you didn’t remember where a cracked wall or rusty gate was after you have what you need to deal with them. The small little dash bursts definitely don’t ease up on the time it takes to traverse the world either, especially with its sometimes hidden paths or lack of memorable landmarks, but getting around isn’t outright excruciating either and dungeons never really demand you to come back in and solve a puzzle later unless you entered it before you had an item necessary for even exploring that dungeon.
Puzzle solving in dungeons is actually a fair bit better than the inventory focused ones since it can be about things like figuring out how to raise platforms or understand quiet clues like the lit up diamonds next to a doorway. There’s nothing that feels like it approaches being clever, but being in a dungeon can at least be a brisk experience where you need to decipher a small set of challenges compared to the wandering around in search of items you do outside and in houses. The dungeons are also a bit plainer in visual design, the game otherwise having a very nice and colorful world that sells its magical feeling outside the dreary dungeons and their hegemonic stone walls and floors. You can definitely see the shortcuts the creators took in having things like the rabbit you catch for a puzzle never actually appear in the flesh and the leprechauns who can sell you items are just yellow eyes hiding inside the holes of trees, but the mystical aesthetic is never forgotten and cranked up at a few key points to inject a bit more magic into the adventure even if the closest thing you ever get to actual spells are you making potions.
THE VERDICT: Mask of Mists isn’t an egregiously bad game, but it is a game where too much time is spent walking about to carry one item to a far off area where its needed only to do so again and again. The frequent load times are made mildly tolerable by an unusual effect of painting in the world, but the combat always feels too basic to excite and the puzzles the game bases itself around are never so clever or difficult that it feels like it’s stoking your brain to be creative. Dungeons are a little better than outside areas because they try to guide you to solutions more subtly than the inventory puzzles, but the exterior areas look much more inviting and mystical despite being the host to just a lot of running around to deliver items to where they are useful. A threadbare plot and nothing particularly inventive just add to the ideas in Mask of Mists that lack any depth, so while it’s not painful to play, it doesn’t really have anything to draw prospective players in.
And so, I give Mask of Mists for PlayStation 4…
A BAD rating. Mask of Mists almost feels like it is a game afraid to be more. Its combat is basic and doesn’t attempt to innovate or improve the capabilities of its monsters even as you get deeper into the adventure, the inventory puzzles never ask for you to truly understand them so long as you take the right items to the right spots, and exploration mostly emerges from that rather than figuring out anything particularly difficult. Even the optional puzzles might have clues that are a bit too straightforward to not understand, their rewards often marginally better weapons, healing potions, or more rubies than you’ll ever need to barter with the leprechauns. It’s not without its decent puzzles that require a moment of considering what’s on hand and what the clues might mean, and there is some mildly tricky navigation involved in a few dungeons, but too much of the experience boils down to uninspired point and click type puzzles that are only really difficult if you forget something from earlier in the game. Keeping the difficulty low does mean it is the kind of game you can walk through without too much irritation, but that merely helps it avoid becoming annoying with all the repeated trips back and forth rather than making its tasks compelling.
Perhaps the areas loading in with the interesting color effect is just some Unity engine tool that isn’t used much since most games try to load in better or more naturally, but it will likely be what I always remember about this otherwise unmemorable game. The fantasy world isn’t creative or fleshed out, even its best puzzles are pretty simple, and even its one boss battle didn’t push hard enough to make its fighting system feel like it has any merit. If it utilized its bright and colorful world in tandem with that loading method better it might at least come off as something somewhat artistic, but Mask of Mists feels like it lacks any strong vision for what it wants to be beyond putting together basic concepts the creators have seen in other video games.