There was one question that vexed me above all in 2021. Ghosts n’ Goblins Resurrection was the most fun game I’ve played in many years. I had an absolute blast with this throwback design “resurrecting” the classic series, and it was easily my pick for game of the year last year. So why didn’t everyone else think that?*
You’d never know it was a modern classic from the reviews on Metacritic. For those unfamiliar with video game reviews, an average score of 7.4 essentially means the game is considered borderline bad. Not since Prey (2017) have I seen a great game so critically robbed.** How did this not at least get “Best Action Game” nominations from everyone??
Arthur’s creaky joints are not the problemI will not claim that Resurrection has mass-market mainstream appeal in terms of its visuals or game design. However, that wouldn’t prevent game reviewers from scoring it highly if they thought it was a great game for enthusiasts. Let’s first investigate instead the most obvious potential source of criticism for Resurrection—its controls. Did the game bomb critically and commercially because it was believed to have frustrating controls?
To simplify, the game was commonly panned for having stiff controls.*** Some of the common reasons cited were the fixed jumping trajectories, inability to attack diagonally, and lack of a double jump. Let’s review why I can’t take any of those criticisms seriously.
When you jump left or right in Resurrection, the protagonist Arthur is carried forward in a pre-determined arc trajectory with only the tiniest amount of mid-air control left to the player. His movement speed is also fairly slow, which makes recovering from a mistimed jump and generally evading enemies a little harder.
The old-school jumping is of course intended to be more realistic than in most games: if you jump in real life, you can contort your body in midair but not really change your inherent trajectory after leaping. This also provides the benefit of allowing the player to attack while jumping backwards, as a dual defensive-offensive option.
Regardless, the main intent is to bake-in player commitment into this fundamental action: the player has to learn to be intentional and always look before they leap.
It’s true that most players generally don’t like controls that limit their freedom of movement. They would much prefer having some amount of ability to recover after inputting a control and undo a mistake.
It’s also a big part of why tripping in Super Smash Bros. Brawl is so hated. It’s why all the ailments that can befall you in Far Cry 2 are infamous. Most players hate dealing with sporadic malaria symptoms, having their gun jam, or needing to repair the engine of their car. These kinds of randomness feel unfair, because the average player hates their agency over input being taken away. It also means that players generally hate their movements feeling realistic.
Regardless of one’s preference for “realistic” or “video-gamey” jumping, can any of these developer choices be inherently bad? Absolutely not—everything is completely arbitrary in the realm of artistic or design opinions. It’s the same story for the inability to attack diagonally and lack of a double jump. These are stylistic choices that are no different than for, say, a film with cartoony animations vs. one with grounded physics.
(Even input responsiveness is subjectively debatable. A common criticism leveled against The Last Guardian was that Trico was unresponsive, even though the entire point of the game was to establish him as a separate creature and being with its own will.)
What reviewers get wrong about difficultyBut why ignore that games are not movies, since there is an input-response loop between the player and the content? The vast majority of games do still require a minimum level of responsiveness. Some reviews even claimed that Resurrection’s controls simply are not responsive. That could genuinely be a real problem, but in reality the game’s controls are very responsive, simple, and obvious, and Arthur responds predictably. Outputs always reflect the intended inputs.
I would even say the controls are perfect for the game. They have no objective flaws as far as I can see; they are extremely precise, and input latency is very reasonable.
Sometimes games are unjustifiably criticized for having challenging controls, when the controls actually perform flawlessly, and the gameplay is simply meant to be challenging by requiring fairly exacting control input to make progress. Wave Race: Blue Storm and Bionic Commando: Rearmed are strong examples that come to mind. I struggle to understand why some games get panned for requiring demanding control inputs that have a learning curve, when so many widely-praised games also have very tight input timing requirements (Sekiro, the Nioh series, fighting games, etc.).
Highly-reviewed games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste are similar to Resurrection in that they also require incredibly demanding, often extended sequences of inputs to progress. They have very fast death-respawn cycles and necessitate huge numbers of trial-and-error attempts. Death is constant, and there is little in the way of forgiveness.
Doing difficulty rightIf Resurrection is too hard for most people, surely it does matter if deliberate control constraints are partly at fault, right? Here again I think the critics missed the mark entirely.
It’s true that the old-school controls deliberately limit options, because the player can’t change their mind and audible mid-action based on instantaneous input. But despite Resurrection being very demanding of the player in terms of control input, the game actually isn’t necessarily even that hard! If anything, it deserves praise for handling accessibility right: the developers took a very challenging game and made it as accessible as possible.
To its great credit, Resurrection actually has some of the best difficulty scaling in any game ever. It is quite achievable for most people to beat the game on the easiest difficulty settings. Not only is the game almost never unfair, it has very frequent respawn checkpoints, and learning the enemy patterns and environmental progression takes only a few tries at most. Level sections never feel like they’re dragging out for too long. You learn and progress past small segments of a level at a time, in other words. There are even mandatory hints upon death!****
I say this not as someone who pointlessly insists you must “git gud” at hard games, but half the NES library, F-Zero GX’s Story mode, Ninja Gaiden II (2008), or any of the Souls games are all much harder. Resurrection is not even as hard as Mega Man 11, and I never saw anyone critiquing that game as being too demanding.
What’s actually going onNone of the above is really the root criticism of the game. And while some of the margins for error for the platforming are indeed a little tight, they are also a little forgiving.
The fundamental distinguishing characteristic of the Ghosts n’ Goblins series is its random enemy behaviors, and thus the constant manic energy required to survive their attacks. As a result you are having to make decisions and react on the fly at all times—all the while anticipating several moves in advance—and this is the defining reason why the series is great. As Matthewmatosis succinctly summarized, “in Ghosts 'n Goblins, you are constantly solving a problem.”*
In Resurrection you have to look everywhere and plan ahead in your mind. The player is asked to keep up with the manic pace while also always being deliberate and careful with their every move.
The reason why I am so upset about this game not earning critical praise is because this gameplay is genuinely fantastic. Many of the enemy patterns are even outright brilliant.
So why didn’t this game win over critics and see glowing praise from all comers? Firstly, it’s important to emphasize that the Ghosts n’ Goblins series are 2D games.
In a 3D game, you can evade in three dimensions. You can sidestep, dodge, or back away from enemies. You can generally look on from a distance and plan ahead before crossing any dangerous thresholds. I’m hard-pressed to think of a single 3D game where you are constantly under attack from all sides.
With Ghosts 'n Goblins games, that does not apply. There are essentially no moments to stop and plan or rest. The games are literally survival gauntlet platformers. Enemies are constantly moving towards you, because that’s the entire experiential point of the series—“this is a horror rollercoaster, try to even survive!” Once you get on the ride, it does not stop or relent. Even platformers that have frenetically-paced challenge spots generally have multiple places to pause or rest along the way.
Enduring the gauntletIn essence, it’s this experience of deliberate but rapid decision-making, combined with constant danger that makes or breaks the series for a player. Surviving a challenge in any game is a reward, but each time you survive a threat in Resurrection, a new one is almost immediately upon you again. There is no time to actually savor the reward of besting any individual threat; you are effectively only allowed to enjoy a sense of accomplishment upon reaching a checkpoint or completing an entire level. But the satisfaction is mighty!
This is what reviewers did not understand about Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection. They weren’t really complaining about difficulty, or randomness, or fairness. They were unhappy with it because they eventually grew mentally tired of the unrelenting chaos.
This is why the common criticisms leveled at Resurrection do not make sense. A revered series like the original NES Castlevania games had all the same “problems” and then some—not only did you have fixed jumping trajectories and “stiff,” sluggish controls, you even had to deal with knockback damage,** locked movement on staircases, and more.
Random attack patterns, bottomless pits… none of these elements have ever been uncommon in cherished classic games. Yet they’re criticized in modern reviews for games like Resurrection. These are all nonsense reasons without justified specific context.
The real reason why Resurrection didn’t speak to a lot of people wasn’t objective, but subjective. A lot of people don’t enjoy a game that provides nearly unrelenting stress. Almost all games have push and pull mechanics, with frequent breaks to relax and enjoy rewards. But for many, Resurrection’s chaotic pace is simply mentally fatiguing. They endure for so long until they are tired of the game, and give up on liking it. If you’re not sure what I mean, or why this is really so critical, watch this short video from Masahiro Sakurai clearly explaining this aspect of game design.
Game criticism needs to evolveIs a work of art being mentally exhausting bad? No, I don’t think so. It’s not radically dissimilar to games like Dark Souls that have been celebrated for instilling psychological anguish in players in order to provide a deeper sense of reward.
Resurrection is just not everyone’s cup of tea. But neither is City of God.
It is very, very hard for me to think of any significant fair criticisms for Ghosts n’ Goblins Resurrection. That’s not to say it deserved perfect review scores, but I do think reviewers in general need to reassess their views within the lens of art theory.
A review or critique of an artwork has to be fair to the work. For example, criticizing Resurrection or any other game for not having a double jump is almost always pointless—it’s simply an intentional or artistic choice. It’s not that you have to agree with the intention, or believe the execution achieved the intention, it’s that you have to at least try to understand the intention.
Critics of Resurrection weren’t critiquing the philosophy or the execution of the game design in actuality. They were mischaracterizing their points, and instead revealing their own personal preference for different kinds of games than the one they were reviewing.
Of course, no reviewer is expected to enjoy every genre or style of artwork. If a critic simply prefers more relaxed styles of games, that at least would be subjectively fair. But I didn’t see any reviewers stating that subjective preference, only deriding the game for perceived bad design. And that’s truly a shame, as I do think Resurrection was critically robbed.
How you can helpThe Ghosts 'n Goblins series are games designed for action-platformer fans that reward players with deep satisfaction from beating its stages. They provides much of the same profound sense of accomplishment as the newer Souls series which proved to be the most influential games of the last decade.
Capcom is really on a roll these days. If you can afford to, don’t wait for a sale. Support this awesome game, and just buy the darn thing!*
Resurrection takes the series’ extremely manic yet methodical gameplay to new heights. Players feel like they’re on a non-stop conveyor belt ride towards inevitable death. And the constant cheating of death is exactly why the game is so awesome. It’s a hell of a rewarding ride to conquer.