[Game Review] Celeste

Note: this review contains spoilers.


I first played Celeste a few months ago when the hype for it was at its peak.  It was being praised for its inspiring story, hard-as-nails platforming, gorgeous pixel art, and effective soundtrack.  The game follows Madeline as she decides to climb Mount Celeste, which has been said to have supernatural powers that cause one to reflect on oneself.  Sure enough, it doesn't take long before a mirror version of Madeline appears and berates her with doubt, telling her she'll never make it to the top and insisting that Madeline needs her.  As the plot develops, you are challenged with tight platforming levels, each layering in a new level mechanic before moving on to the next, allowing scenes of doubt and perseverance until finally you reach the summit and Madeline learns to accept her anxious doppelganger as an integral part of her person.

How uninteresting does that sound?  I'm not trying to be an outright contrarian here, but I delayed playing this game for quite some time by how dissonant the game's praise and the game's log line sounded.  And to be sure, the game is surely worth almost all of the praise it has gotten  - except where the story is concerned.  Before getting to that rant, though, let's talk about what really works in this game. 

Firstly, the art design is magnificent.  Madeline's hair, despite being entirely undefined pixel art, has a smooth flowing animation to it.  The colors are vibrant, the game world varied, and overall picking a nice compromise between the classic pixel art and the more modern camera zooms, particle effects, etc.  Celeste is delightful to look at, and listen to.  The music is superb, to the point I've caught myself listening to it on the bus quite a lot.  It deftly pivots from a sense of melancholic urgency to melancholic ambience (just about the only thing about this game that is truly melancholic is the music).

Likewise, the gameplay is amazing.  The thing least exaggerated thing in the critical consensus is definitely the gameplay.  Controls are tight, platforming challenges are incredibly challenging, and there is enough side content to basically double your playtime.  For gamplay alone, this game is more than worth your time.  The mechanics are pretty basic: jump, climb, dash.  And that's all you get for the whole game.  At one point, you'll be able to do a double dash when the plot finally catches up to where you know it is going to go, but that isn't until the final leg of the game.  Levels play with these mechanics well by introducing platforms that only move when you dash, walls that turn into hazards after you've touched them, and blobs that can only be dashed through but often empty out into spike pits or other hazards.  The game introduces new mechanics and teases as much as they can out of them before moving on to the next.  Again, I'd like to stress that for gameplay alone, this game is worth your time and money.  Because what follows is my biggest problems with the praise this game has gotten more than the game itself.

Celeste is the most by-the-numbers indie title you could ever ask for.  It follows every trend to a 'T', and as such it is very boring conceptually, thematically, and in style.  The game is executed to near perfection on all fronts (except thematically), so it largely gets a pass, but on paper this game is so trite that it should have sunk into the wallpaper pattern of the indie game landscape.  The irony here, is that one of the things the game is getting so heavily praised for is the thing it plays into cliche the most: the story.  Mental health and overcoming adversity (especially when that adversity is you) is a great theme to develop a game on, but this game does absolutely nothing knew with it.  The game is incredibly twee throughout, completely devoid of much self awareness or reflection.  Its sincerity would be fine if it had any place to go with it, but the most complex it gets is by creating a plainly obvious comparison between overcoming the challenges of a difficult game and overcoming the issues with your doubts, fears, and feelings of inferiority.  The game doesn't even develop this much outside of obviously pointing it out, saying things like "You can do it!" after Madeline says she can't after defeating the previous level.  I don't want to be misunderstood here:  the themes themselves are good, but when they are plainly told to you the affect is pretty much lost.  Sure, I can see how you telling me that me beating this game is like how I should continue on to bettering my mental health state, but you've given me no freedom to explore the issue, to understand the particulars of how these two could interrelate.

The biggest sin the game makes is not allowing the player to interact on an intellectual level with the themes.  Instead, the themes act as wallpaper to an otherwise excellent game.  Silent Hill 2, which I recently reviewed, allowed for this intellectual participation and it's over a decade old.  Even Silent Hill 3, which was a mess of a game, did as well.  I think the effort put into this game is spectacular, and the gameplay itself the best 2D platformer I've played since Super Meat Boy (and it may even be better than that), but thematically it is as shallow as those inspirational quotes given on twitter.  Its great for a quick pick-me-up, but in an hour or so you'll forget its affect and be back in whatever state you were before.  The game has told you "you can do it!" without giving you the tools to really look at "how".



8.5