Good news, everyone! Compared with April, the accessibility of video games in April is much better. Luckily because this is the only benefit of the longest April ever.
Let's start with the best in a month, the most surprising, right?
Predator: hunting ground
Predator: The hunting ground surprised me completely. After being completely dissatisfied with Illfonic's accessibility on Friday, the 13th, my expectations for the Predator were not high. When I started it, I was shocked to see that it not only has comprehensive subtitle options, including text size scaling and background opacity options, but also has a complete controller remapping function! Even the biggest title does not seem to be consistent.
Joshua Gertz, the executive producer of the game, Credit to Tara Voelker and DAGERSystem Teach him these important things, and always happy to see developers listening to the voice of the community.
Although the subtitles may be better (the subtitles are still a bit small at the maximum size, and visually impaired players may have difficulty reading the thin text styles), "Predator: Hunting Grounds" is one of the other deaf / highest voice features. Accessible games so far this year.
The Predator has an Apex Legends-style ping system, making communication much easier than most online shooters. For players with cognitive disabilities, a small detail will be a big boon, it is the word "kill" that appears above the enemy's head. Completing the game's excellent accessibility features are both the enemy icons that appear on the minimap and the top compass bar, as well as the outline around the enemy (and your teammates), even if they are blocked by the player's vision.
Next is pretty good accessibility, especially for deaf / personal accessibility, it is Persona 5 Royal. Although the choice of subtitles is very limited, Persona 5 Royal is one of the few games that performs well with default subtitles.
Persona 5 Royal
The player can choose not to turn on or off the subtitles, but to turn the sound on or off, and can also choose to display animated subtitles. I hope more games can be allowed to use a very good choice is to choose whether the subtitle text is played by voice or displayed all at once.
Dialogue text and dialogue selection are well done, stylized, eliminating the contrast problems often encountered when reading text, and the font is large and eye-catching and easy to read.
Although there is no controller re-mapping, turn-based combat and single-button input make the game much easier than the "smash all buttons and hope to get the best" combat style that frequently appears in many games.
Even if the player must use a bumper and trigger, it is not a multi-input setting. You click the bumper, and then click the next button. Although full remapping is ideal because there are many players who cannot use certain controller buttons, the lack of multiple button presses is very useful for players like me who suffer from joint pain and occasionally have limited mobility.
The biggest release in April was a remake of "Final Fantasy 7." Fans of the FF series and the original 1997 edition have been waiting for this seemingly forever game, which has made it popular for its decent ease of use.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
The player can choose to display the subtitles of the main conversation and surrounding chats, with or without the name of the speaker. For those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, ambient quivering subtitles is a popular feature because it can bring a more immersive experience, and many games ignore this.
The reason for the subtitle failure is the lack of background of the main dialogue text and very small font selection. When I migrated Cloud globally, I found the text difficult to read often.
For me, the biggest failure is the lack of small maps and / or signpost guides, especially on the labyrinthine streets of the slums. According to a position indicator on the compass, it is easy to go the wrong way. Go in the right direction. It ’s annoying at best (playing the game on PS4 Pro should n’t let me open the map and have to wait a few seconds to load the map), which is the worst obstacle for players with intellectual disabilities .
For me and my broken hand joints, the highlight of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is the automatic aiming in combat. This greatly reduces the buttons for players to mashup, because they do not have to worry about guiding their characters and pressing the battle button.
The last welcome feature is the option to play in classic mode.
In the classic mode, the battle is automatic. Although it is not a good substitute for controller remapping, it eliminates obstacles for many players. This is all about accessibility.
Another recently remastered version of "Resident Evil 3", unfortunately, the lack of accessibility is far more terrible than the game itself, which is not surprising, because the previous RE game made me wonder if Capcom realized that accessibility One thing.
As I mentioned in the "Can I Play That?" Deaf / personal accessibility review, the game started poorly and there was no improvement.
Resident Evil 3 Remake
There was a phone ringing at the beginning of the game, but there was absolutely no visual prompt. When Jill finally hinted at the fact that something was happening, her conversation made it easy to convince people that there was someone at the door instead of the ringing phone.
Subtitles are really not very good. The player cannot change the size, there is no background, which makes the contrast a problem of legibility. The most annoying thing is that there is no speaker label. Considering that most communication is done through intercoms, and deaf players will not know who is talking about what, this is a problem. When the dialogue is not possible, this makes the whole story less interesting.
The biggest problem in RE3 is the goddess of revenge. Specifically, the only clue that he wants to kill you is an audio prompt. If you ca n’t hear him approach, it ’s too bad for you. Considering that he is chasing you throughout the game, this negligence almost prevents the deaf and hearing impaired players from playing.
Compared with other games in the RE series, the first hope of RE3 is that it has a more linear style, which makes it easier for the game to have no visual cues from any enemies. With the exception of Nemesis, few people will surprise you on your journey across the globe.
Speaking of not surprisingly, the accessibility disaster, recently launched "completely reliable delivery service." Like Capcom, tinyBuild makes me wonder if it realizes that accessibility is a concept. "Hello Neighbor" is one of the most difficult to access games in the deaf games I have encountered. The "completely reliable delivery service" is basically the same, but for players with limited mobility.
Completely reliable delivery simulator
The gist of the game is this:
You can use the left and right bumpers and left and right triggers to lift the packages, and then use the left rocker to transport them to various locations while continuing to hold all four triggers. This setting can cause cramps in people with the most flexible fingers.
I know this is the point of the game. It is difficult to do well. But this does not mean that you will lose the whole longing game. At least, there needs to be an option to switch the pressing of these necessary buttons instead of holding them. Even without the inevitable hand cramps, you will still encounter interesting ragdoll physics problems. This game is the only playable method for me. Even then it was only a few minutes. It was my Xbox Elite Controller and mapped the last four dials to the trigger and bumper.
I always hope that every tinyBuild game I really want to play will get some form of accessibility and will continue to bring disappointment.
Do you know what is not disappointing? An updated game with improved accessibility features (such as Fallout 76) was released through the Wastelanders extension.
Fallout 76
Although adding conversation history does not improve the quality of subtitles (they are still small, beige in very beige games, and often difficult to recognize), they do help deaf and hearing impaired players and have cognitive abilities People with disabilities track conversations and follow new and improved stories.
Unfortunately, there are still problems with some radio stations that do not have subtitles, such as new broadcasts about supervisors. After understanding her position and finally meeting the woman I had been chasing for a long time, I didn't actually learn much because the instruction "Listen to the Supervisor's Broadcast in the Radio" did not come with anything. subtitle.
The last one of this month's remastered works is the remake of "Judgement of Mana", just like "Blood Warrior", which surprised me. I have never played any mana series games before. I really like "Dragon Quest" and "October Traveler" who gave birth to this game. In addition to noticing that many general problems in game subtitles are unsatisfactory, I also provide you with a reading course, which is the late Susan Banks (Can I play that?) Provided by the co-founder.
Mana Trial
Charlotte, a character in the Magic Trial, has stress / phonological impairments, and she pronounces L as Ws. Now, native English speakers can easily explain the above situation: "I can't get Heath to wet out completely!" Just like "I can't let Heath face it alone!" Because they sound the same ,right? This is a simple assumption. But what if you have never heard of these words and learn English by spelling instead of sound?
Susan's comment on Octopath Traveler discusses why these alternative spellings may cause great problems for deaf people. This is especially a problem in the case of the spelling shown above, where the alternate spelling is actually a different word in English. Therefore, although I understand that this is done to achieve results, and as a novel writer, I also feel this, but from an accessibility point of view, this is not the ideal approach and can be pronounced incorrectly Correct the word by adding the correct spelling of the word in brackets next to the.
On the whole, the text of "Judgement of Mana" is difficult to read, the expression of dialogue subtitles is inconsistent, and it will not be better overall.
The text is too small in some cases (currently in the game), and the text sometimes needs to always have a background and speaker name.
Controller remapping is limited and therefore not entirely useful, only allowing players to remap buttons from buttons of the same button class. Face buttons can only be remapped to other face buttons, triggers can only be remapped to other triggers or paired triggers, and so on. Unfortunately, this will hinder the remake of many classic games.
During this month, you can play games. All in all, April is much better for inclusive games than March, but there is still a lot of work to do and to do!
