Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

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JaySevenZero
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Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Final Form Games' 2011 vertically scrolling shoot 'em up - Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony.
Owen Ketillson

Re: Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by Owen Ketillson »

Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (2011) is caught between new and old ways of thinking about shmups. The game is obviously heavily influenced by arcade shmups dating back to the turn of the millennium. Cave's Progear (2001) has been cited by the dev team as a particularly strong influence, but larger elements of Cave and Treasure's house styles have also been found. But Jamestown tries to go in creative directions most arcade shmups don't, with mixed results.

The shooting in Jamestown works, although it's more mechanically simple than a lot of shmups. The player can choose a ship before starting a level from four different options, this choice is then locked for the duration of a level. This means a commitment is made by the player to execute an entire level in one particular style for its duration. This makes Jamestown a less dynamic shmup than other franchises like Raiden(1990) with its scaling/switching weapons or an Ikargua(2001) with its phase switching. In its place Jamestown has a bullet absorption mechanic in Vault that rewards players with points. It's less exciting to play, but timing of Vault brings a tactical level of score building to Jamestown that other shmups lack. Jamestown's mechanical design encourages the player to replay levels in order to determine when/where is best to use Vault. Success on the leaderboard isn't tied to level clearing so much as clearing levels efficiently. Jamestown's mechanical simplicity encourages the player to master level planning, not reflexive skill to get good. Ikaruga has some of this with its combo mechanic, but that game's difficulty keeps the player more focused on the actual "playing" than Jamestown's memorization focus.

Jamestown gets away with a tactical approach because it's positioned differently from the classic arcade games that inspired it. Unlike most shmups, Jamestown was designed from the ground up as a home release. As you can replay levels instantly without paying new quarters each time the player can change, and improve their strategy gradually with practice. In an arcade game this would feel like a cheap grab for more coins.

Jamestown doesn't go far enough though in benefiting from its home platform. If you play the story on either the "normal" or "difficult" difficulty setting you'll learn the end of the game is only present on the higher difficulty settings, without any warning before hand. And this isn't just a secret ending, start on "normal" and you'll find 60% through the game that you have to start all over at the beginning on "difficult" is you want to continue. Same with that difficulty level 80% through the game. Having started on the first difficulty level, I was force to play through the front half three entire times to get to the final level, it's a cheap way to artificially pad out a shorter game. This means the player will spend more time re-playing the easy, less interesting levels over and over. The game is structured to show the player its duller side more often than its more exciting content, a baffling decision that can make this game awful dull to slog through.

This also totally breaks the difficulty curve. Playing through the game the third time on "legendary" is still quite easy as so much of the difficulty in Jamestown is based on memorizing enemy placement and attack patterns. The player learns these things the first two times through the game, making the third pass very easy until they arrive at the final level. Playing an unseen level on "legendary" is much harder than doing it with practice, creating a massive difficulty spike right at the end of the game that ruins the established flow. The problem isn't that the game gets hard, it's that the game's structure masks the difficulty before turning it on all at once.

As is Jamestown's multiple modes don't contribute to each other at all. It feels as if the game's tried to include all the variations you would find in home releases of arcade games. While I always appreciate more modes, the game refuses to let them interact in any way. This makes sense for a home port, where they are fluffing up a short experience. But Jamestown is a home release and these modes could very easily be integrated into a more cohesive whole. The challenge mode or gauntlet mode should be incorporated right into the campaign as a means to unlock the later levels. Replaying so much of this game over and over is a weird decision. Jamestown ends up feeling like less of a love letter to classic shmups, but more of a tribute to their awkward home ports. Ports that much like Jamestown, show off the worst parts of the games proudly.
Owen Ketillson

Re: Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by Owen Ketillson »

(I'm posting this in a separate reply from my last post because it addresses a totally different aspect of the game. Frankly, this will be the more interesting stuff to think about imo. Naturally you'll discuss the gameplay design stuff yourselves, but this is stuff not a lot of people have discussed about Jamestown. I think it's a disservice to the medium to not talk about this stuff. Hope this interests you.)

I have a lot of problems with the plot and setting of Jamestown: The Legend of the Lost Colony(2011). The basic plot revolves around a man who goes to "Mars" as a means to atone for crimes committed back on Earth. It's basically a story of how colonialism can redeem and purify past transgressions. Complete with happy ending where everyone comes together when the "bad guys" are defeated to plant a tree, stare into a sunset and create a new home on an inhabited place. Except that's an archaic understanding of colonialism, one that ignores the horrors brought to the locals by the colonizers.

Jamestown isn't set on Mars, it tries to be but it invokes so much imagery from the colonization of North America. It's obviously an allegory for the creation of the British Empire on the new world. That brings baggage that calling it steampunk Mars can't get rid of. They gloss over atrocities, and create others where they didn't happen to portray the colonization of New World as a noble endeavor in ways it never was. This is especially true when Jamestown deals with First Nations imagery.

The most egregious example is how Jamestown paints the martians as the aggressive antagonists. There is one level where the action pauses so the player can see the remnants of the Roanoke colony destroyed by a Martian attack. That moment serves to tell the player, "these are the bad guys and you need to take revenge". Except that absolutly is not what happened. While it's possible that the actual Roanoke settlers we're massacred by First Nations, all the evidence is that they left their settlement fort on their own accord. The idea that they were mercilessly slaughtered in their homes is perpetuating the false idea of the real First Nations as ruthless savages that deserved the genocide they ended up receiving.

I could brush that aside as an unfortunate oversight, but after that story beat the game the game twists history in a way I find even more troubling. The characters Victoria Dare and Joachim are introduced. These characters are given the visual identifiers of being First Nations. Victoria is dressed in leather skins, and Joachim sports a Mohawk (both largely Hollywood anachronisms of First Nations dress). They are presented as the established settlers who have integrated into the new land. Both Victoria Dare and Joachim Gans are real people that existed in the history of the european takeover, except they were a white Christian and Jew respectively. Their fictional versions here exist solely to have some First Nation looking characters on the side of "the good guys" excusing the fact that you're shooting up the native martians. The only point the game acknowledges the Martians as sentient beings is in the farce variant of one of the cutscenes. So Jamestown ends up being a game where the player is tasked with eradicating all the native presence that doesn't fit into what the British saw as "proper". While white-adapting natives get to live, they were the good guys.

Maybe I'm over analyzing a shmup plot, but in a place where native people are still pressured to become more white this bothers me a whole lot. The idea of First Nations people needed to become more "white-like" has harmed those people for centuries. Here in Canada we had a residential school system created to take First Nation children away from their families to go to roman catholic schools where they were banned from discussing their culture or speaking their language. These schools were essentially there to white-wash kids, and were often physically, emotionally and sexually abusive of their native students. And these were open as late as the 1980s. Whole groups of peoples were genocided on this continent. In no way should Jamestown be presenting those racist ideals as something good, something purifying for the settler.

Don't think I am stretching to make this reading of the game. Jamestown, Roanoke, John Smith, Walter Raleigh, Victoria Dare, Joachim Gans are all real places, events and people that participated in the actual colonization process. I didn't put this reading on the game, Final Form games did by drawing so much attention to the imagery of American history present in Jonestown.

I am not opposed to playing a game where I am a bad guy, but it needs to be aware of it. Telling stories about awful people can be a great tool, but not when it comes out as shallow propaganda for something so destructive of so many lives. They can make the martians look as alien as they like, but in this game they take the specific place of Native Americans, and Jamestown has us shoot them like dogs.

None of this makes the shooting of Jamestown any worse, the "how" of Jamestown if you will. But it sure does make the "why" of it different for me, to the point where I won't be picking this back up. It'll be interesting to see how any of this reads for you Brits across the pond. So much of our understanding of this stuff relies on how we know our own history, and I imagine you've all got very different understandings than us over here in the "new" world.
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Tleprie
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Re: Our next podcast recording (26.5.16) - Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by Tleprie »

According to my Steam purchase history, I picked up Jamestown almost a year after its release when it was on sale for 66% off. I’m not a huge player of shmups, although I enjoy almost any that I play. I believe I learned about Jamestown after watching a review of it online, and added it to my wishlist until it inevitably went on sale.

GAMEPLAY & DIFFICULTY
Having little to compare the game with, I found the gameplay of Jamestown to be near perfect. The levels never feel too long or too short. The ships all feel good to control, although I quickly found my ship of choice with Treason, a fast moving ship that was perfect for dodging and staying alive when my friends were all dead.
I loved the vaunt mechanics, as they allow us a small safety net, but we always pushed to see how long before we gave in and used them. There are times when some of the bullet patterns definitely feel a bit absurd, and might even seem unfair without vaunt.
I feel as though the game excels on divine difficulty, the hardest available at the start. I am sure that this is dependent on player preference, but my friends and I loved the stress of never feeling quite good enough, and just scraping by.
Judgement, the final difficulty completely changes the game, adding in green bullets that cannot be destroyed with vaunt. We’ve tried the first level a few times but have never made much progress, perhaps getting to the boss once.

SOLO vs CO-OP
While the game works fine as a single player experience, I think it is best with a friend or three. Before the PS4 release, this was one of the few games that we would play together on my laptop, Usually with me on the keyboard, two people with gamepads, and some unfortunate soul struggling to see what was going on and play with a mouse.
Whenever we reached a point where only one person was left alive, the others would begin cheering/threatening them on, counting down the time till someone came back. These are among my favorite couch co-op moments.

ART & MUSIC
I really enjoy the art of Jamestown, the boss designs and background art in the levels are especially nice. The music by Francisco Cerda is also great, and the final level track “The Lost Temple of Croatia Suite” stands out as feeling especially epic (perhaps this is because it is the track we heard the most).

STORY
I honestly couldn’t tell you a thing about the story other than you are a fugitive from the British who goes to Mars and the Spanish have some rad aliens on their side.
The fact that the story didn’t engage me isn’t at all a problem for me. I’m glad it is there for people who want it, but am thankful that it is easily skippable.

PS4 CONTENT
While I would have bought Jamestown on the PS4 without any updates, the new ships and levels made it an even easier decision. I love being able to play through the game again with my friends, without being crowded around a tiny laptop screen.
We especially enjoyed the new ship mechanics, as they allowed more customization of the standard bullets and special weapon.
I quite enjoy the challenge of directing my giant arrowhead through enemies, while also avoiding their bullets.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I don't have much bad to say about the game. I enjoy some of the challenge levels (not so much the high score ones), but I would be completely fine with just the main missions of the game. I think it truly shines with multiple players, especially when you are finally beat a boss on your last credit, after a dozen close attempts.

If you are looking for a great couch co-op experience, don't pass up Jamestown.
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James
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Re: Our next podcast recording (26.5.16) - Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by James »

Thanks both for your excellent posts on the game. Whilst we definitely have in mind to cover some of the real-life historical implications of Jamestown's setting/story, Owen, it's fair to say that your perspective will be invaluable.

For anyone else looking to leave feedback on Jamestown, we will be recording later in the week. Make sure to get your responses in early, or look out for a final call for community input, on the day of recording on Twitter (@caneandrinse).

Thanks again, Owen and Tleprie; your posts really are fantastic and much appreciated. :)
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Re: Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony

Post by ratsoalbion »

Here' the interview with the devs that has come out of these discussions, kindly put together by Spencer Saunders:
http://caneandrinse.com/an-interview-wi ... orm-games/
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