It’s time for my annual investigation into the accessibility of the year’s biggest games. From Cyberpunk to Demon’s Souls, and from Miles Morales to Valhalla, let’s look at how these games do in terms of controller remapping, subtitles, colourblind settings, and more.
Support Game Maker’s Toolkit on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit
Disclosure
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Call of Duty: Cold War, Crash Bandicoot 4, Demon’s Souls, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Immortals Fenyx Rising, The Last of Us Part II, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, and Watch_Dogs Legion game codes provided by the relevant publishers. Xbox Series X console provided by Microsoft. I was a game design consultant on Sackboy: A Big Adventure. I’m friends with a voice actor on Paradise Killer.
Sources
[1] PS5’s Lack of PS4 Controller Support Is a Problem | LauraKBuzz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_6dRU3j9dg
[2] David Tisserand | Twitter
https://twitter.com/TisserandDavid/status/1321454095086112773
[3] Assassin’s Creed Valhalla — Can I Play That Deaf/Hard of Hearing Review | Can I Play That?
https://caniplaythat.com/2020/11/09/assassins-creed-valhalla-review-deaf-can-i-play-that/
[4] Cyberpunk 2077 Epileptic PSA | Game Informer
https://www.gameinformer.com/2020/12/07/cyberpunk-2077-epileptic-psa
[5] Cyberpunk 2077 | Twitter
https://twitter.com/CyberpunkGame/status/1336389181988343812
[6] Demon’s Souls PS5 Easy Mode Was Considered by Bluepoint, But Felt It ‘Wasn’t Our Place’ | Push Square
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/11/demons_souls_ps5_easy_mode_was_considered_by_bluepoint_but_felt_it_wasnt_our_place
[7] The Last Of Us Part II: Accessibility Review | SightlessKombat
http://www.reviews.sightlesskombat.com/CIPT/TLOU2.shtml
[8] Ghost of Tsushima Accessibility Impressions — Just Barely Misses the Bullseye | Can I Play That?
https://caniplaythat.com/2020/07/14/ghost-of-tsushima-accessibility-impressions/
[9] Innovation in Accessibility | The Game Awards
https://thegameawards.com/nominees/innovation-in-accessibility
[10] The Future of Among Us | Innersloth
https://innersloth.itch.io/among-us/devlog/181107/the-future-of-among-us
[11] Control’s free August update lets you turn off dying | Destructoid
https://www.destructoid.com/stories/control-s-free-august-update-lets-you-turn-off-dying-600529.phtml
[12] Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Free Content Update | EA
https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/jedi-fallen-order/news/free-content-update
Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance)
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales (2020)
DOOM Eternal (2020)
The Last of Us Part II (2020)
Resident Evil 3 (2020)
Maneater (2020)
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (2020)
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (2020)
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020)
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War (2020)
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time (2020)
Desperados III (2020)
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (2020)
Ghostrunner (2020)
Hades (2020)
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Disc Room (2020)
Sackboy: A Big Adventure (2020)
FIFA 21 (2020)
Marvel’s Avengers (2020)
Spelunky 2 (2020)
Star Wars: Squadrons (2020)
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 (2020)
XCOM: Chimera Squad (2020)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020)
Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
Astro’s Playroom (2020)
Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020)
Dirt 5 (2020)
Spiritfarer (2020)
Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020)
Watch Dogs: Legion (2020)
NBA 2K21 (2020)
Mafia: Definitive Edition (2020)
Mafia (2002)
Tell Me Why (2020)
Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)
Far Cry New Dawn (2019)
Crusader Kings III (2020)
Amnesia: Rebirth (2020)
Paradise Killer (2020)
Demon’s Souls (2020)
Valorant (2020)
Grounded (In Early Access)
Gears Tactics (2020)
A Total War Saga: Troy (2020)
Minecraft Dungeons (2020)
Lair of the Clockwork God (2020)
Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)
Streets of Rage 4 (2020)
Haven (2020)
Inertial Drift (2020)
Ikenfell (2020)
Wildfire (2020)
HyperDot (2020)
Paper Mario: The Origami King (2020)
Super Mario 3D All-Stars (2020)
Among Us (2018)
Control (2019)
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)
Half-Life: Alyx (2020)
Music used in this episode
Music provided by Music Vine – https://musicvine.com/
Lee Rosevere on Bandcamp – https://leerosevere.bandcamp.com/music
Contribute translated subtitles – https://amara.org/en-gb/videos/nXqDR558ytnl/info/how-accessible-were-this-years-games/?team=
Source
FINALLY someone who mentions visual noise reductions. As someone who deals with hypersensitivity, many games, especially fast ones, I can't track at all. Smash Bros is a great example of a failure for accessability in this sense, to the point where certain stages I can't read info on when both characters are idling. The lack of good control options doesn't help. Like why can't you turn off stick smash, or map smashes to a button, or map short hopping to a button.
Amazing video!
There is an interesting problem of accessibility, my opinion is that accessibility shouldn’t remove the challenge from a game, it should make it so the challenge is something you can deal with.
I feel like the best solution for Fromsoft would be to give an easier mode and just clearly mark a standard difficulty as the intended mode.
I think people changing to easier mode even though they should be able to play Demon's Souls or Dark Souls in their original intended difficulty is all about self-control.
That could be partly fixed by how some game for example give you certain achievements/trophies only when you complete something in certain difficulty. For example "complete campaign in hard difficulty or higher". That would still give players reason to play in more challenging difficulties.
Why am I the only one upset only the mafia series has a cutscene pause button?
Dark Souls should have an easy mode BUT you can only select between it and "normal" at the start of the save and cannot switch it later. With this no one would have the temptation to switch to the easy mode mid game since they'd have to restart their whole progression.
1:15 he forgot kfc console 🤦♂️
There is a great stigma against people with disability in japan sadly. They are seen as a burden on society, so much so that there have even been murders of the disabled specifically. Tis a sad thing to say…
For Demon's Souls there's an unofficial (very) easy mode: mage build.
Man im so happy you make these videos 🙂
"don't be like riot"
sound advice no matter what your trade.
I'm still really frustrated that Halo: Master Chief Collection still doesn't have in-game subtitles for half of the games in their collection. The cutscenes have subtitles but nothing in-game.
❤️
i don't mind assist in games but the leaderboards score must use the multiplyers that are common on japanese games like osu and a few music games, the more assist you enable you get a penalty multiplier in you score for leaderboards.
Just use the coin glitch with Demon souls.
i didnt even realize control remapping was an accesibility issue, i just thought it was a normal part of a games options
It's great that things are improving for accessibility, especially in indie games. Just a reminder that Ubisoft is the sexual assault company that defends the sexual assault of its workers.
2:20 ha definitely not a coincidence
I think games like souls should not lower their difficulty because of inexperienced players or something else. Certain games are made to be this hard and changing it would make this difficulty pointless. Not all games are created to be played by everyone, just move to something else and not pretend that the developers reduce its difficulty just to make everyone complete it. Certain games are not developed for a certain type of target. If developers decide to make the game for everyone it's great, but don't blame the one who doesn't do that.
I didn't know about FIFA's "press A to football" mode. Now that's a truly universal control scheme.
What I’d really like to see is some indication in the difficulty settings of which setting is the closest to how the developers intended the game to be experienced. This wouldn’t be necessary for all games but for the ones where difficultly is an integral part of the experience it would be amazing.
For PC games, hotkeying everything (ideally with remappable hotkeys) is really important.
Games that make you do many repetitive actions with the mouse can quickly get unplayable even if you aren’t disabled, but just have some strain issues.
And clearly labelling the hotkeys too. Darkest Dungeon only tells you half the hotkeys lol, I had to figure the rest out by randomly pressing buttons.
To be honest, I don't think that Demon Souls should be more accessible, I disagree with you. Not everything is for everyone, and it's a pillar of the Dark Souls series specifically that winning the game is an achievement. By definition, it's a valuable experience because it's not something that everyone can do.
Personally I can't play dark souls. It's too hard, that game is unaccessible to me. I am one of the people who tried their hand and failed the challenge. And I'm okay with that.
An easy mode in Dark Souls would kill the value of the experience, it's the gaming equivalent of handing out participation trophies.
Accessibility has a time and a place where it's appropriate and good, but also a time and a place where it's not. Everyone should be able to get up the stairs and into your local public library. But it would kill the sporting spirit if everybody who participates gets to win the state football championship, that's a special achievement.
If Dark Souls is too hard for you to play, like it is for me, the solution is not to make it easier, because you won't get the experience you want that way. You will have destroyed the experience by doing so. No, the answer when Dark Souls is too hard is that you failed the challenge, and it's not your thing. That is the point where you go and play a different game and be happy for the other people that can enjoy it and attain that achievement.
There are just some things in life like that. Nobody climbs Mount Everest because it's a fun thing that everyone can do, they do it because it's hard and they're special for doing it. Dark Souls is the same. It's not fun for the whole family, it's a punishingly hard experience for the special few that can overcome it.
I'm all for difficulty options in certain games. Not all of them though. If it is mainly story based or is not trying to be difficult or is directed at kids, I say have a difficulty option. But the souls series has no need for one as it is broadcasted as being difficult, and that Is part of the magic. Being able to relate with other players who accomplished what you did is incredible, just seeing the signs on the ground makes you feel triumphant