Lucca202
BACKER
1994
Mega Man X2 is more of X. It's basically the same game with some slight improvements, such as dashing being available from the get-go and the Second Armor having some nice upgrades over the first -- I think the upgraded charge shot in this version might be my favorite in the entire X franchise.
The one thing I have mixed feelings about in this game is the X Hunters. On paper, they're a good idea, preventing the player from being too rigid with their boss order by placing extra bosses randomly across stages that have a time limit on them. But the execution is... iffy. They're not all that random, plus the time limit for defeating them is too strict and not communicated properly (or at all).
Still, I gladly replay X2 along its predecessor.
The one thing I have mixed feelings about in this game is the X Hunters. On paper, they're a good idea, preventing the player from being too rigid with their boss order by placing extra bosses randomly across stages that have a time limit on them. But the execution is... iffy. They're not all that random, plus the time limit for defeating them is too strict and not communicated properly (or at all).
Still, I gladly replay X2 along its predecessor.
1995
X3 is often considered the worst of the SNES trilogy, and people will tell you that, by the time X3 came out, new consoles were coming out and/or the X formula was becoming dated, and that's why the game is not very well loved. I'm here to denounce the unfairness of it all: regardless of when it was released, X3 is bad on its own merits.
It's curious -- on the surface, it doesn't seem all too different from the previous two games. That's because it's not about X3 having a single big issue: instead, it brings to the table multiple bad or poorly executed ideas that end up making it consistently awful to play.
For instance, there was an attempt to make the game harder than the previous one -- which is fair -- but a lot of the time this is achieved either through frustrating enemy placements or attacks that are random or erratic. Several boss battles devolve into damage races, and that's bad, because damage values have been reworked and are now all over the place.
Then there's the upgrades. There's a mess of armor and chips and ride armor forms and whatnot, with extensive backtracking and convoluted acquisition methods. But what makes it really bad is that most of these "upgrades" are questionable: ride armors are a trivial addition to the game you have to go out of your way to even unlock, and having the Third Armor equipped actually makes the game harder, because it gimps your charged shot and makes it sure you won't hit anything ever again.
There's an overuse of breakable walls, there's the awkward empty boss rooms -- which are, by the way, one of the ugliest design solutions I've seen to not having a real reason to fight an extra boss -- but the worst, the very worst thing in the game is the bait and switch involving Zero. He's playable, alright -- except he's sluggish and can't enter boss rooms. And hope to god you don't ever die playing as him, otherwise you've just screwed yourself out of the best weapon in the game.
It's not the worst X game -- god knows the second half of the franchise reaches completely new lows -- but it's not worth revisiting.
It's curious -- on the surface, it doesn't seem all too different from the previous two games. That's because it's not about X3 having a single big issue: instead, it brings to the table multiple bad or poorly executed ideas that end up making it consistently awful to play.
For instance, there was an attempt to make the game harder than the previous one -- which is fair -- but a lot of the time this is achieved either through frustrating enemy placements or attacks that are random or erratic. Several boss battles devolve into damage races, and that's bad, because damage values have been reworked and are now all over the place.
Then there's the upgrades. There's a mess of armor and chips and ride armor forms and whatnot, with extensive backtracking and convoluted acquisition methods. But what makes it really bad is that most of these "upgrades" are questionable: ride armors are a trivial addition to the game you have to go out of your way to even unlock, and having the Third Armor equipped actually makes the game harder, because it gimps your charged shot and makes it sure you won't hit anything ever again.
There's an overuse of breakable walls, there's the awkward empty boss rooms -- which are, by the way, one of the ugliest design solutions I've seen to not having a real reason to fight an extra boss -- but the worst, the very worst thing in the game is the bait and switch involving Zero. He's playable, alright -- except he's sluggish and can't enter boss rooms. And hope to god you don't ever die playing as him, otherwise you've just screwed yourself out of the best weapon in the game.
It's not the worst X game -- god knows the second half of the franchise reaches completely new lows -- but it's not worth revisiting.
2012
From a first impression, I expected Thomas Was Alone, as an indie puzzle platformer with simple graphics, to be focused on its gameplay, offering fiendish levels of challenge like so many others in its genre. I definitely didn't expect that a game about quadrilaterals would win me over based on the charm of its cast.
Yup, TwA's cast of characters is entirely composed of colored rectangles who never really say a word by themselves, and yet, this is a narrative-driven game. If giving these "characters" adequate names wasn't enough of an issue, how can you give them feelings and personalities?
Thomas Was Alone accomplishes this mainly by means of sound: music follows you throughout all stages, setting the mood for each moment in the story. And even more importantly, there's the narrator, who explains the thoughts of each character to you in great emotional detail, advancing the story even though the game's visuals don't show much.
Puzzles are also a big part of the storytelling. The stages in themselves are pretty simple, and a seasoned player probably see the solution right at the start. If looked at purely mechanically, it's busywork, but each puzzle reflects the characters' inner struggles and how they're overcome. It's another way in which the game manages to be surprisingly moving.
Thomas Was Alone is an incredible demonstration of minimalism in storytelling. It should take you two to three hours to fully complete, and it's while it's probably not going to be the best game you'll ever play, it's worth experiencing just from how unusual it is.
Yup, TwA's cast of characters is entirely composed of colored rectangles who never really say a word by themselves, and yet, this is a narrative-driven game. If giving these "characters" adequate names wasn't enough of an issue, how can you give them feelings and personalities?
Thomas Was Alone accomplishes this mainly by means of sound: music follows you throughout all stages, setting the mood for each moment in the story. And even more importantly, there's the narrator, who explains the thoughts of each character to you in great emotional detail, advancing the story even though the game's visuals don't show much.
Puzzles are also a big part of the storytelling. The stages in themselves are pretty simple, and a seasoned player probably see the solution right at the start. If looked at purely mechanically, it's busywork, but each puzzle reflects the characters' inner struggles and how they're overcome. It's another way in which the game manages to be surprisingly moving.
Thomas Was Alone is an incredible demonstration of minimalism in storytelling. It should take you two to three hours to fully complete, and it's while it's probably not going to be the best game you'll ever play, it's worth experiencing just from how unusual it is.
1997
On the transition between the SNES and N64 generations, Nintendo lost most of its third-party franchises. Mega Man X was one of those, with Capcom jumping ship and releasing Mega Man X4 on the Sony PlayStation. And it's great that they did: can you imagine if, after the low performance of X3, they decided to make X4 into some sort of early 3D monstrosity? We'd miss out hard.
X4 brings the series to a new generation, with flashier graphics, cell-animated FMV cutscenes and revamped gameplay, while still preserving the traditional sidescrolling X formula. It cuts back on most of the pointless stuff X3 had added, and gives us the one thing that game had left us waiting for: a playable Zero. In X4, you can choose to play the game as either X or Zero, each of which has different moves and a slightly different story.
Yessir, we can finally take the Z-Saber in hand and slice around, no worries about being gimped, teleporting away when approaching boss doors or having to avoid dying at all costs for some upgrade. Zero's gameplay, as a melee character, is very different from X and completely changes how you approach fights. Both characters are really fun in their own ways, giving X4 a lot of replayability.
The story doesn't really make a lot of sense: Sigma instigates yet another rebellion, this time by corrupting the Repliforce, an organization originally created to stop Mavericks. Surprise surprise. They enact a coup d'etat and then flee into space, death cult style. It's kinda silly. But it does manage to hit some emotional notes, especially in Zero's story. It helps if you play with Japanese voices, though, since the dub is a bit of a meme (spoiler warning on those clips!).
Next to the original, X4 is one of my favorites in the series, and I replay it often. The only problem is, it being so good means the series only goes downhill from here.
X4 brings the series to a new generation, with flashier graphics, cell-animated FMV cutscenes and revamped gameplay, while still preserving the traditional sidescrolling X formula. It cuts back on most of the pointless stuff X3 had added, and gives us the one thing that game had left us waiting for: a playable Zero. In X4, you can choose to play the game as either X or Zero, each of which has different moves and a slightly different story.
Yessir, we can finally take the Z-Saber in hand and slice around, no worries about being gimped, teleporting away when approaching boss doors or having to avoid dying at all costs for some upgrade. Zero's gameplay, as a melee character, is very different from X and completely changes how you approach fights. Both characters are really fun in their own ways, giving X4 a lot of replayability.
The story doesn't really make a lot of sense: Sigma instigates yet another rebellion, this time by corrupting the Repliforce, an organization originally created to stop Mavericks. Surprise surprise. They enact a coup d'etat and then flee into space, death cult style. It's kinda silly. But it does manage to hit some emotional notes, especially in Zero's story. It helps if you play with Japanese voices, though, since the dub is a bit of a meme (spoiler warning on those clips!).
Next to the original, X4 is one of my favorites in the series, and I replay it often. The only problem is, it being so good means the series only goes downhill from here.
2000
So remember how Mega Man X4 was great because it cut down on the bloat from X3 and presented a lean and refined Mega Man X experience that everyone loved? Well, X5 is here, and the series is back on its bullcrap!
It's a legitimate marvel how they managed to mess up X5 this much when it uses X4 as its base, and also when it was meant to be the series finale, wrapping the X series in a neat little bow so that Mega Man Zero would take the spotlight. While far from the worst X game, this is not a game worthy of ending a franchise at all.
Let's begin with the plot: something something Sigma returns, the Sigma Virus is blanketing the Earth, there's a space colony with another virus in a collision course with the planet, sharks are jumped, go kill the animal-like robots to obtain the McGuffin. You know the drill.
It's not so much the events of the plot that bother me, but the cheap way the story is presented. X4's cell animated cutscenes are gone, replaced by static backgrounds and text boxes that are as dry as they are tedious. And ironically, for as long as they are, they fail to communicate the plot or the urgency of its events in any meaningful way.
Basically, the Hunters have 16 in-game hours to stop a falling space colony from colliding with Earth. Every time you enter a stage, it takes one hour from the clock, and if it runs out, a catastrophe happens and you get the bad ending. You need to get items from the mavericks to fire a weapon to destroy the colony, but the outcome of doing so is random, meaning you can play the game completely right and still get the bad ending. It's stupid.
Bosses in X5 have levels that increase as the 16-hour timer goes lower, which increases their HP and also makes it so they drop extra upgrades in a very obtuse manner, but to summarize, it makes it so the correct way to play X5 is to begin by killing yourself seven times on a random stage so to advance the timer and fight bosses at a sufficiently high level. It's also stupid.
In fact, the entire upgrade system is a downgrade from X4. X has two armors instead of one, and unlike previous games, you can't equip them as you go, instead having to get the entire armor and then equip it on stage select. Both armors are worse than the Fourth Armor in a gameplay sense, but are required to obtain several items.
In practice, this brings two problems: one, the backtracking is obscene, worse even that X3. In one instance, you have to go through a stage to get the boss weapon, to then replay it to get an armor part with the weapon, then replay a third time with the armor for a heart tank. Two, Zero cannot access many of these power-ups, so you have to stop and play as X for a moment -- also, those three trips into the stage now become four.
In fact, Zero is no longer an entirely separate character -- you can choose to play as either character when you begin a stage, another strict downgrade from having two separate stories. The backtracking is one issue, and another is that heart tanks and other stat upgrades only apply to the character that picked them up. If playing as X, you inevitably end up with a gimped Zero, but X is the only one that can get several items, meaning Zero never reaches full power if you play as him.
Of course, the game never bothers to explain any of these obtuse, very important mechanics, but what it does do is overload you with tutorials. It's another departure from the series I do not understand: Mega Man X was thought of as a masterpiece of conveyance, carefully teaching the player its rules just from letting them experiment with the stage design themselves.
X5 not only has an ugly tutorial mode, it adds Alia, a navigator who will chime over the course of the stage. In practice, she will stop the gameplay constantly to overexplain every basic piece of information, every single stage contraption, every trap... I have a clip where she interrupts me four times during a 30 second interval in the volcano stage, just to explain a trap you can see coming from a mile away.
And the stages don't really need explaining: apart from the new ziplines, it's not like they are much different from previous games. Although -- there was a bit of a visual downgrade in some areas, with some props and enemies looking considerably worse. This, along with the cheap storytelling, would be explainable by budget cuts, however, the annoying systems, complex upgrades and mass tutorialization wouldn't, so again, I don't get X5. All in all, the game feels like a bootleg of X4, made by completely different people.
All of that said -- it's not a particularly terrible game. If you play as X, and come into the X5 knowing how it works and what to avoid, I would say it's a bit better than X3, if annoying in other ways. And unlike X3, it has two of the biggest bangers in the entire franchise among its tracks, which counts for something. But I do feel X5 reflects the decline of the X series very well.
And boy, what a decline it is. I wish X5 had been the end of it.
It's a legitimate marvel how they managed to mess up X5 this much when it uses X4 as its base, and also when it was meant to be the series finale, wrapping the X series in a neat little bow so that Mega Man Zero would take the spotlight. While far from the worst X game, this is not a game worthy of ending a franchise at all.
Let's begin with the plot: something something Sigma returns, the Sigma Virus is blanketing the Earth, there's a space colony with another virus in a collision course with the planet, sharks are jumped, go kill the animal-like robots to obtain the McGuffin. You know the drill.
It's not so much the events of the plot that bother me, but the cheap way the story is presented. X4's cell animated cutscenes are gone, replaced by static backgrounds and text boxes that are as dry as they are tedious. And ironically, for as long as they are, they fail to communicate the plot or the urgency of its events in any meaningful way.
Basically, the Hunters have 16 in-game hours to stop a falling space colony from colliding with Earth. Every time you enter a stage, it takes one hour from the clock, and if it runs out, a catastrophe happens and you get the bad ending. You need to get items from the mavericks to fire a weapon to destroy the colony, but the outcome of doing so is random, meaning you can play the game completely right and still get the bad ending. It's stupid.
Bosses in X5 have levels that increase as the 16-hour timer goes lower, which increases their HP and also makes it so they drop extra upgrades in a very obtuse manner, but to summarize, it makes it so the correct way to play X5 is to begin by killing yourself seven times on a random stage so to advance the timer and fight bosses at a sufficiently high level. It's also stupid.
In fact, the entire upgrade system is a downgrade from X4. X has two armors instead of one, and unlike previous games, you can't equip them as you go, instead having to get the entire armor and then equip it on stage select. Both armors are worse than the Fourth Armor in a gameplay sense, but are required to obtain several items.
In practice, this brings two problems: one, the backtracking is obscene, worse even that X3. In one instance, you have to go through a stage to get the boss weapon, to then replay it to get an armor part with the weapon, then replay a third time with the armor for a heart tank. Two, Zero cannot access many of these power-ups, so you have to stop and play as X for a moment -- also, those three trips into the stage now become four.
In fact, Zero is no longer an entirely separate character -- you can choose to play as either character when you begin a stage, another strict downgrade from having two separate stories. The backtracking is one issue, and another is that heart tanks and other stat upgrades only apply to the character that picked them up. If playing as X, you inevitably end up with a gimped Zero, but X is the only one that can get several items, meaning Zero never reaches full power if you play as him.
Of course, the game never bothers to explain any of these obtuse, very important mechanics, but what it does do is overload you with tutorials. It's another departure from the series I do not understand: Mega Man X was thought of as a masterpiece of conveyance, carefully teaching the player its rules just from letting them experiment with the stage design themselves.
X5 not only has an ugly tutorial mode, it adds Alia, a navigator who will chime over the course of the stage. In practice, she will stop the gameplay constantly to overexplain every basic piece of information, every single stage contraption, every trap... I have a clip where she interrupts me four times during a 30 second interval in the volcano stage, just to explain a trap you can see coming from a mile away.
And the stages don't really need explaining: apart from the new ziplines, it's not like they are much different from previous games. Although -- there was a bit of a visual downgrade in some areas, with some props and enemies looking considerably worse. This, along with the cheap storytelling, would be explainable by budget cuts, however, the annoying systems, complex upgrades and mass tutorialization wouldn't, so again, I don't get X5. All in all, the game feels like a bootleg of X4, made by completely different people.
All of that said -- it's not a particularly terrible game. If you play as X, and come into the X5 knowing how it works and what to avoid, I would say it's a bit better than X3, if annoying in other ways. And unlike X3, it has two of the biggest bangers in the entire franchise among its tracks, which counts for something. But I do feel X5 reflects the decline of the X series very well.
And boy, what a decline it is. I wish X5 had been the end of it.
2001
Mega Man X6 is what you would get if you took the bad parts of X5 as the standard for a new game and then half-assed the whole thing. Which is, in fact, more or less what happened: The game is a sequel to what was supposed to be the series finale, and was rushed out in order to make a christmas release date and milk the series just a tad bit further while the PS2 gained an install base.
Not that it takes someone telling you that the game was rushed to realize it. X6 is a further visual downgrade from X5, and is home to the most garish pixel art I've ever seen in a high-profile franchise. Sprites have bad shading and use visually clashing colors, much like what you'd see in fan modifications back in the day. A lot of the spritework is clearly unfinished and lacks animations, and the character design itself just feels bland and out of place.
That's, of course, what you get from a surface observation. Playing the game is actually much worse, and you get to feel just how little effort was put into developing it. X6 is home to both the worst bosses and worst stages up to this point in the franchise, both areas of the game having been developed without much regard for consistency or balance.
Stage design revolves around cluttering the screen with enemies and/or projectiles, as well as having lots of instant death traps. Plus, almost all stages involve a stupid gimmick that doesn't fit the game and detracts from the experience, such as a randomly assembling the stage from a pool of areas, a cheaply made, artificially difficult miniboss that you have to fight five to six times in a row, or having to hunt for small destructible objects before proceeding. It's all a big joke, and the final stages are the punchline, requiring highly specific loadouts to even get through them.
To further complicate things, nightmare effects take place whenever you exit a stage. For instance, when you leave the fire stage, other stages may have fireballs falling from the sky, and the ice stage makes other stages have ice physics. Of course, of all the things the game spends a good minute explaining, this system isn't one of them, and because a lot of nightmare effects run counter to the stages' "design" (if you can call it that), it makes some infuriating experiences even more frustrating.
It gets worse: there's an optional boss thing going on like the one in X2, but instead of making a plain old door where you go in, kick butt and come out, they make this whole detour of a secret area that's basically a stage within the stage. Except it's no secret at all -- a lot of them are easier to find than the end of the stage itself, so you can end up in this really hard area early in the game entirely by accident. In that regard, it's worth noting that, unlike ANY other Mega Man game, you can get softlocked in X6 stages due to not having a power-up or weapon, being then forced to suicide into picking stage select, which speaks volume about the care given to the level design.
To make things even more foul, there's this gimmick now where every stage has named reploids to rescue, and they permanently die if a certain enemy attacks them before you reach them. This enemy often spawns right next to the reploid, and in one instance, right on top of them, meaning the only way to save these NPCs is often to clairvoyantly kamikaze towards them. If you miss them and they get caught? Well, too bad, you have to load from the last save and restart the stage.
This is not just a completionist thing: the abysmal parts system from X5 is back, except now, parts don't come from bosses, but from those lost reploids, and again, because the stage design often demands specific loadouts, you can get screwed pretty bad if you lose the wrong one to the Nightmare Virus.
These parts, whether they improve damage or movement, are often a stopgap for the armors you get completely sucking. Don't even think about playing normal X because some stages are plain impossible as him. You begin the game with a gimped Falcon Armor and later get to choose between the Blade Armor and Shadow Armor. The latter disables air dashing and special weapons (and is ugly as hell), while the former is marginally better than Falcon, but not by much, and it has this accursed downwards dash that's super easy to trigger on the dualshock d-pad and killed me literal dozens of times when above a gap -- Gaze sends his regards.
Ah yes, Gaze. Let's talk about bosses. X6's Bosses are in at least one of three categories: complete pushovers, tedious or utter abominations. Most of the first eight bosses fall into the first category: they have one or two attacks and are beatable with the buster and your eyes closed. The rest of the eight mavericks, as well as the optional bosses, are also not hard, but they make you wait until they are vulnerable to attack, which drags the fight for a good several minutes.
But the absolute king stuff comes at the end of the game, where there are bosses you have to damage race and/or get insanely lucky in order to beat. Nightmare Mother is a bad joke, a blocky sprite that slides around and spams the screen. And Gaze? The guy literally has the power to lag the game as an attack, and you can hardly damage him without damaging yourself in the same amount. Have fun, and hope the Blade Armor doesn't throw you straight into the pit.
I can rant on this game for a while longer. Stuff like Zero being handwaved back into the plot, or again most powerups being restricted to X. The fact is, every second spent with X6 is time spent in misery. It is a thoroughly terrible game.
Franchises need to end at some point, or at least be rebooted. The fact that the X franchise kept running up to when it got to this is just so heartbreaking for someone who grew up playing the original X. The sickest part? There's still two games to go. And they say X7 is worse than this. I worry for my sanity.
Not that it takes someone telling you that the game was rushed to realize it. X6 is a further visual downgrade from X5, and is home to the most garish pixel art I've ever seen in a high-profile franchise. Sprites have bad shading and use visually clashing colors, much like what you'd see in fan modifications back in the day. A lot of the spritework is clearly unfinished and lacks animations, and the character design itself just feels bland and out of place.
That's, of course, what you get from a surface observation. Playing the game is actually much worse, and you get to feel just how little effort was put into developing it. X6 is home to both the worst bosses and worst stages up to this point in the franchise, both areas of the game having been developed without much regard for consistency or balance.
Stage design revolves around cluttering the screen with enemies and/or projectiles, as well as having lots of instant death traps. Plus, almost all stages involve a stupid gimmick that doesn't fit the game and detracts from the experience, such as a randomly assembling the stage from a pool of areas, a cheaply made, artificially difficult miniboss that you have to fight five to six times in a row, or having to hunt for small destructible objects before proceeding. It's all a big joke, and the final stages are the punchline, requiring highly specific loadouts to even get through them.
To further complicate things, nightmare effects take place whenever you exit a stage. For instance, when you leave the fire stage, other stages may have fireballs falling from the sky, and the ice stage makes other stages have ice physics. Of course, of all the things the game spends a good minute explaining, this system isn't one of them, and because a lot of nightmare effects run counter to the stages' "design" (if you can call it that), it makes some infuriating experiences even more frustrating.
It gets worse: there's an optional boss thing going on like the one in X2, but instead of making a plain old door where you go in, kick butt and come out, they make this whole detour of a secret area that's basically a stage within the stage. Except it's no secret at all -- a lot of them are easier to find than the end of the stage itself, so you can end up in this really hard area early in the game entirely by accident. In that regard, it's worth noting that, unlike ANY other Mega Man game, you can get softlocked in X6 stages due to not having a power-up or weapon, being then forced to suicide into picking stage select, which speaks volume about the care given to the level design.
To make things even more foul, there's this gimmick now where every stage has named reploids to rescue, and they permanently die if a certain enemy attacks them before you reach them. This enemy often spawns right next to the reploid, and in one instance, right on top of them, meaning the only way to save these NPCs is often to clairvoyantly kamikaze towards them. If you miss them and they get caught? Well, too bad, you have to load from the last save and restart the stage.
This is not just a completionist thing: the abysmal parts system from X5 is back, except now, parts don't come from bosses, but from those lost reploids, and again, because the stage design often demands specific loadouts, you can get screwed pretty bad if you lose the wrong one to the Nightmare Virus.
These parts, whether they improve damage or movement, are often a stopgap for the armors you get completely sucking. Don't even think about playing normal X because some stages are plain impossible as him. You begin the game with a gimped Falcon Armor and later get to choose between the Blade Armor and Shadow Armor. The latter disables air dashing and special weapons (and is ugly as hell), while the former is marginally better than Falcon, but not by much, and it has this accursed downwards dash that's super easy to trigger on the dualshock d-pad and killed me literal dozens of times when above a gap -- Gaze sends his regards.
Ah yes, Gaze. Let's talk about bosses. X6's Bosses are in at least one of three categories: complete pushovers, tedious or utter abominations. Most of the first eight bosses fall into the first category: they have one or two attacks and are beatable with the buster and your eyes closed. The rest of the eight mavericks, as well as the optional bosses, are also not hard, but they make you wait until they are vulnerable to attack, which drags the fight for a good several minutes.
But the absolute king stuff comes at the end of the game, where there are bosses you have to damage race and/or get insanely lucky in order to beat. Nightmare Mother is a bad joke, a blocky sprite that slides around and spams the screen. And Gaze? The guy literally has the power to lag the game as an attack, and you can hardly damage him without damaging yourself in the same amount. Have fun, and hope the Blade Armor doesn't throw you straight into the pit.
I can rant on this game for a while longer. Stuff like Zero being handwaved back into the plot, or again most powerups being restricted to X. The fact is, every second spent with X6 is time spent in misery. It is a thoroughly terrible game.
Franchises need to end at some point, or at least be rebooted. The fact that the X franchise kept running up to when it got to this is just so heartbreaking for someone who grew up playing the original X. The sickest part? There's still two games to go. And they say X7 is worse than this. I worry for my sanity.
2013
Ittle Dew originally got my attention not simply due to its cute visuals and tomboy protagonist, but because one look at it was enough to tell it was inspired by The Legend of Zelda. That's a high bar to set for oneself, and I've seen many games that claimed to be like Zelda, but fell short. Upon playing, though, I was delighted to see that Ittle Dew could, indeed, cash that check.
Zelda is a long-time favorite series of mine. Bar the first couple of games (and excluding BotW, which is a different beast), it's a series that's very light on combat mechanics, most of the challenge coming from using your equipment correctly to a) navigate environments and b) solve puzzles. The amount of (a) and (b) varies from game to game, from 2D to 3D, among other things, but in any case, it's that mix that had the series see success for decades. This deceptively simple formula, however, requires great level design to work, which is where a lot of copycats fall short.
As Ittle Dew starts, the eponymous adventurer Ittle Dew and her magic fox Tippsie shipwreck into a mysterious island wherein lies a castle. They start heading inland looking for a way off the island and soon meet Itan Carver, the item salesman. He promises to make them a raft in exchange for an artifact hidden within the castle, and so, our pair sets off to explore it.
The castle is the main dungeon for Ittle Dew, being both the first place you enter and the location of the final boss, however, it's impossible to explore it all in one go without extra equipment. There are three special items in the game: the Fire Sword, the Portal Wand and the Ice Wand, all of which are found in dungeons to which Itan will take you... for a fee. To cover his expenses, you'll need to gather gold from the castle and return to his shop.
And here is the game's most insane twist: Ittle Dew allows you to obtain the items in whatever order you want. Depending on that order, the route through the castle will be completely different, both due to items affecting different parts of the environment, and because of the interactions between their mechanics. More than that, while the game does give you enough gold to buy all three items, it's possible, by finding the correct route, to finish the game with any of the three possible pairs of equipment.
The fun in Ittle Dew is not simply finishing it once, but replaying it and going for a different item combination. It's a mind-bending exercise that forces you to rethink your strategy according to your new set of tools. And make no mistake: the puzzles in Ittle Dew can get outright devilish, requiring the player to think long and hard about what to do. This is especially true for puzzles outside the main dungeons, which are either small caves hiding collectibles, or the two optional endgame dungeons that require the use of all three items to get through. That "Retry Room" in the menu is not there just for show.
This challenging gameplay is accompanied by an extremely charming presentation. Wobbly, colorful graphics make the world look alive, tunes stick to your head for hours after you're done playing, and the cast, while small, is lovable and well realized. Ittle is a nonchalant girl eager for adventure, which plays off of Tippsie's down-to-earthness -- although, to be fair, it's clear that, whatever the fox is drinking, it's not exactly health potions. And Itan, well, let's just say his love for carving goes a bit too far.
Surpassing every expectation and being sold at rather modest price point, I can hardly shower Ittle Dew with enough praise. Far from being a generic, forgettable Zelda-clone, it's a game of its own, building on tried-and-true ideas with fantastic original design. It's not a game for the impatient, nor people looking for action, but if you're willing to sit down and work on some brainteasers, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Zelda is a long-time favorite series of mine. Bar the first couple of games (and excluding BotW, which is a different beast), it's a series that's very light on combat mechanics, most of the challenge coming from using your equipment correctly to a) navigate environments and b) solve puzzles. The amount of (a) and (b) varies from game to game, from 2D to 3D, among other things, but in any case, it's that mix that had the series see success for decades. This deceptively simple formula, however, requires great level design to work, which is where a lot of copycats fall short.
As Ittle Dew starts, the eponymous adventurer Ittle Dew and her magic fox Tippsie shipwreck into a mysterious island wherein lies a castle. They start heading inland looking for a way off the island and soon meet Itan Carver, the item salesman. He promises to make them a raft in exchange for an artifact hidden within the castle, and so, our pair sets off to explore it.
The castle is the main dungeon for Ittle Dew, being both the first place you enter and the location of the final boss, however, it's impossible to explore it all in one go without extra equipment. There are three special items in the game: the Fire Sword, the Portal Wand and the Ice Wand, all of which are found in dungeons to which Itan will take you... for a fee. To cover his expenses, you'll need to gather gold from the castle and return to his shop.
And here is the game's most insane twist: Ittle Dew allows you to obtain the items in whatever order you want. Depending on that order, the route through the castle will be completely different, both due to items affecting different parts of the environment, and because of the interactions between their mechanics. More than that, while the game does give you enough gold to buy all three items, it's possible, by finding the correct route, to finish the game with any of the three possible pairs of equipment.
The fun in Ittle Dew is not simply finishing it once, but replaying it and going for a different item combination. It's a mind-bending exercise that forces you to rethink your strategy according to your new set of tools. And make no mistake: the puzzles in Ittle Dew can get outright devilish, requiring the player to think long and hard about what to do. This is especially true for puzzles outside the main dungeons, which are either small caves hiding collectibles, or the two optional endgame dungeons that require the use of all three items to get through. That "Retry Room" in the menu is not there just for show.
This challenging gameplay is accompanied by an extremely charming presentation. Wobbly, colorful graphics make the world look alive, tunes stick to your head for hours after you're done playing, and the cast, while small, is lovable and well realized. Ittle is a nonchalant girl eager for adventure, which plays off of Tippsie's down-to-earthness -- although, to be fair, it's clear that, whatever the fox is drinking, it's not exactly health potions. And Itan, well, let's just say his love for carving goes a bit too far.
Surpassing every expectation and being sold at rather modest price point, I can hardly shower Ittle Dew with enough praise. Far from being a generic, forgettable Zelda-clone, it's a game of its own, building on tried-and-true ideas with fantastic original design. It's not a game for the impatient, nor people looking for action, but if you're willing to sit down and work on some brainteasers, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
2012
I would like to be able to say Assassin's Creed III is the worst game in the franchise. That was certainly the case back when I played it, when Black Flag was just coming out. However, the series is still around, and it's only gotten worse, losing its identity, becoming greedier and more unfocused. ACIII was simply when the signs began to show.
There are a lot of reasons why ACIII is disliked, one of which is that the story spends a lot of time outside the Animus trying to continue the Desmond plot after the messy ending Revelations left us with, in a very boring, tell-don't-show story that's at its best when it's not happening.
The last time Desmond was an interesting character was, well, never. He used to be the POV character when he was being held by Abstergo, and it worked, but he slowly started to morph into a power fantasy self-insert character. III doubles down on the bullcrap, propping him up to be a messiah, the saviour of humanity or some crap. The writer of ACIII is really desperate to make you think he's a badass, and that makes everything so much worse.
Revelations had introduced the reviled platforming sections that expanded on Desmond's backstory. III takes it a step further: every now and then you're taken away from the Animus (aka the part people buy the games for) to play the Desmond Missions, atrocious levels that put you in control of The Man Himself and task you with retrieving some deus ex machina MacGuffin from the templars.
These missions are capital 'b' Bad. They are home to, far and away, the worst level and environment design in the game, to the point of eliciting a surreal, dream-like feeling. I vividly remember a mission where Desmond arrives in Brazil from a subway station, which has no exit to the surface and leads straight into a crowded... MMA arena? Remember when this series was praised for historically accurate landmarks and realistic environments? I don't recall what city it's supposed to be, but I'm fairly certain such a thing does not exist anywhere in the world.
Rest assured, though, these missions are also a failure of storytelling. Eventually, the game has Desmond single-handedly breaking into Abstergo's headquarters, killing several people in the process, including one of the main antagonists. You know, the places we previously established were highly surveilled and dangerous, from where we needed insider help to escape, and were then hunted to the ends of the Earth when we managed it? The last bastion of the Assassins think to send one guy in there, and he walks in and out like he's visiting a Starbucks.
And that's just ACIII's shtick: it's desperately trying to escalate its own narrative, and in doing so, constantly sabotages not only its own storytelling, but the things previous games established. With what they did to the Abstergo plot, nothing feels like a threat anymore, we're just following the script to the end of the game, a feeling reflected in Connor's story just as much as it is in Desmond's.
In our time in the Animus, we're presented with a brief playable section with a man called Haytham and what I believe was a very well-executed twist. Then, we switch to Ratohnhaké:ton, or rather, Connor, the actual protagonist for the game. He's Haytham's son, born to a tribe of native Americans.
Connor is... bad. The least of his problems being that he's basically an anime protagonist: an orphan who's rather angsty and has nothing special about himself, but has an extraordinary destiny awaiting. He finds someone who's willing to train him and becomes a killing machine. It's pretty lame and unearned, and he pales in comparison to lovable playboy Ezio who preceded him.
But no, the real issue with Connor is how inconsistent he is. He follows the convenience of the plot, even when it doesn't make sense for him as a character. Again, he's a native American, but he spends most of his time fighting the British, for American independence? Why? I can only think it's meant to appeal to the patriotism of the American audience, because, um, the thing about American colonists and Native Americans... well, it didn't end well for the Natives.
More to the point, though, the series used to be about Assassins versus Templars, the freedom fighters and their powerful enemies who were everywhere and nowhere in the same time, holding entire cities in vicegrips, ruling through fear and money. Every event in the games prior was a part of the long story of conflict between the two factions.
Not anymore. Not only did Desmond establish that Templars are actual pushovers, but Templars in this particular setting are like, an squad of five clowns, whose leader openly admits he doesn't give a crap about the conflict with the British crown. Connor just... goes through the motions, like the cardboard cutout of a character he is, and his story eventually comes to an underwhelming conclusion that means nothing. All in all, if you ever cared about the plot of these games, ACIII made sure to kill your interest in the franchise.
You'll notice I didn't mention the gameplay much, though, and that's because... it's alright? There's some bullcrap, like a new version of the Assassin Recruits system that feels even more impersonal and forced than the one in Revelations, and a hunting system that, aside from being somewhat tasteless, means, in practice, that you're likely to get mauled by a bear out of nowhere when doing random sidequests.
There's a lot of good, though, like how the game broke off from the series' traditional control mapping and improved combat controls significantly. Also, The Homestead, ACIII's version of rebuilding Monteriggioni and Rome, has you building a village and seeing it become more alive, which is pretty satisfying. Plus, there's the naval missions, ship battles so fun that they decided to make the sequel revolve around sailing.
Other than that, it's pretty much your standard Assassin's Creed: you roam around, jump between buildings, collect sharp, pointy weapons and get stabby. This is also one of the last normal-ish ACs, as in, the ones without the loathsome Helix Store. And to think my other by gripe with ACIII, aside from the storytelling, was that the multiplayer got monetized.
Assassin's Creed multiplayer began with Brotherhood, and it's really one of the few online modes I spent a considerable time on in my life. For those who are unfamiliar with it: in a match, everyone (up to eight players) is placed randomly on the city map. Each player picks a character, and while only that player (or that team) uses that character, there will be several NPCs walking around with the same model.
Each player receives a contract, which is another player they have to kill, and has a pursuer, another player whose contract is this player. Your objective is to detect and evade your pursuer while singling out the player you're after in the crowds and getting stabby on their faces.
What makes the multiplayer interesting is how it encourages stealth and slow movement. If you kill someone while performing high profile actions, you get less points, and those actions can also expose you to your pursuer. This creates a really tense atmosphere where, instead of being trigger-happy and leaping into action, you had to remain patient and observant at all times.
Online AC, taking after other popular multiplayer games of the time, was progression-based and very grindy -- unlocking the most useful items took a lot of time. In previous games, this was mostly seen as a way to increase playtime and increase perceived value -- an annoying, but harmless aspect of the game.
This all changed when III began to monetize everything -- now, not only was progression a lot more confusing, but there was a perverse incentive for those perks to be locked behind higher levels, and for leveling to take long. This $60 experience, which, mind you, had an online pass (remember those?), was now becoming ever more predatory.
This was a big deal at the time, but it's nothing compared to the franchise post Assassin's Creed: Unity. The series has degenerated into a storefront for microtransactions, its mechanics getting warped into something akin to mobile games, optimized to annoy people into spending money. We're seeing not only microtransactions baked into the single player, but also loot boxes, and cryptotrash looks like it's on the way. It can always get worse.
One more day in the gaming industry, I suppose. We just can't have nice things.
There are a lot of reasons why ACIII is disliked, one of which is that the story spends a lot of time outside the Animus trying to continue the Desmond plot after the messy ending Revelations left us with, in a very boring, tell-don't-show story that's at its best when it's not happening.
The last time Desmond was an interesting character was, well, never. He used to be the POV character when he was being held by Abstergo, and it worked, but he slowly started to morph into a power fantasy self-insert character. III doubles down on the bullcrap, propping him up to be a messiah, the saviour of humanity or some crap. The writer of ACIII is really desperate to make you think he's a badass, and that makes everything so much worse.
Revelations had introduced the reviled platforming sections that expanded on Desmond's backstory. III takes it a step further: every now and then you're taken away from the Animus (aka the part people buy the games for) to play the Desmond Missions, atrocious levels that put you in control of The Man Himself and task you with retrieving some deus ex machina MacGuffin from the templars.
These missions are capital 'b' Bad. They are home to, far and away, the worst level and environment design in the game, to the point of eliciting a surreal, dream-like feeling. I vividly remember a mission where Desmond arrives in Brazil from a subway station, which has no exit to the surface and leads straight into a crowded... MMA arena? Remember when this series was praised for historically accurate landmarks and realistic environments? I don't recall what city it's supposed to be, but I'm fairly certain such a thing does not exist anywhere in the world.
Rest assured, though, these missions are also a failure of storytelling. Eventually, the game has Desmond single-handedly breaking into Abstergo's headquarters, killing several people in the process, including one of the main antagonists. You know, the places we previously established were highly surveilled and dangerous, from where we needed insider help to escape, and were then hunted to the ends of the Earth when we managed it? The last bastion of the Assassins think to send one guy in there, and he walks in and out like he's visiting a Starbucks.
And that's just ACIII's shtick: it's desperately trying to escalate its own narrative, and in doing so, constantly sabotages not only its own storytelling, but the things previous games established. With what they did to the Abstergo plot, nothing feels like a threat anymore, we're just following the script to the end of the game, a feeling reflected in Connor's story just as much as it is in Desmond's.
In our time in the Animus, we're presented with a brief playable section with a man called Haytham and what I believe was a very well-executed twist. Then, we switch to Ratohnhaké:ton, or rather, Connor, the actual protagonist for the game. He's Haytham's son, born to a tribe of native Americans.
Connor is... bad. The least of his problems being that he's basically an anime protagonist: an orphan who's rather angsty and has nothing special about himself, but has an extraordinary destiny awaiting. He finds someone who's willing to train him and becomes a killing machine. It's pretty lame and unearned, and he pales in comparison to lovable playboy Ezio who preceded him.
But no, the real issue with Connor is how inconsistent he is. He follows the convenience of the plot, even when it doesn't make sense for him as a character. Again, he's a native American, but he spends most of his time fighting the British, for American independence? Why? I can only think it's meant to appeal to the patriotism of the American audience, because, um, the thing about American colonists and Native Americans... well, it didn't end well for the Natives.
More to the point, though, the series used to be about Assassins versus Templars, the freedom fighters and their powerful enemies who were everywhere and nowhere in the same time, holding entire cities in vicegrips, ruling through fear and money. Every event in the games prior was a part of the long story of conflict between the two factions.
Not anymore. Not only did Desmond establish that Templars are actual pushovers, but Templars in this particular setting are like, an squad of five clowns, whose leader openly admits he doesn't give a crap about the conflict with the British crown. Connor just... goes through the motions, like the cardboard cutout of a character he is, and his story eventually comes to an underwhelming conclusion that means nothing. All in all, if you ever cared about the plot of these games, ACIII made sure to kill your interest in the franchise.
You'll notice I didn't mention the gameplay much, though, and that's because... it's alright? There's some bullcrap, like a new version of the Assassin Recruits system that feels even more impersonal and forced than the one in Revelations, and a hunting system that, aside from being somewhat tasteless, means, in practice, that you're likely to get mauled by a bear out of nowhere when doing random sidequests.
There's a lot of good, though, like how the game broke off from the series' traditional control mapping and improved combat controls significantly. Also, The Homestead, ACIII's version of rebuilding Monteriggioni and Rome, has you building a village and seeing it become more alive, which is pretty satisfying. Plus, there's the naval missions, ship battles so fun that they decided to make the sequel revolve around sailing.
Other than that, it's pretty much your standard Assassin's Creed: you roam around, jump between buildings, collect sharp, pointy weapons and get stabby. This is also one of the last normal-ish ACs, as in, the ones without the loathsome Helix Store. And to think my other by gripe with ACIII, aside from the storytelling, was that the multiplayer got monetized.
Assassin's Creed multiplayer began with Brotherhood, and it's really one of the few online modes I spent a considerable time on in my life. For those who are unfamiliar with it: in a match, everyone (up to eight players) is placed randomly on the city map. Each player picks a character, and while only that player (or that team) uses that character, there will be several NPCs walking around with the same model.
Each player receives a contract, which is another player they have to kill, and has a pursuer, another player whose contract is this player. Your objective is to detect and evade your pursuer while singling out the player you're after in the crowds and getting stabby on their faces.
What makes the multiplayer interesting is how it encourages stealth and slow movement. If you kill someone while performing high profile actions, you get less points, and those actions can also expose you to your pursuer. This creates a really tense atmosphere where, instead of being trigger-happy and leaping into action, you had to remain patient and observant at all times.
Online AC, taking after other popular multiplayer games of the time, was progression-based and very grindy -- unlocking the most useful items took a lot of time. In previous games, this was mostly seen as a way to increase playtime and increase perceived value -- an annoying, but harmless aspect of the game.
This all changed when III began to monetize everything -- now, not only was progression a lot more confusing, but there was a perverse incentive for those perks to be locked behind higher levels, and for leveling to take long. This $60 experience, which, mind you, had an online pass (remember those?), was now becoming ever more predatory.
This was a big deal at the time, but it's nothing compared to the franchise post Assassin's Creed: Unity. The series has degenerated into a storefront for microtransactions, its mechanics getting warped into something akin to mobile games, optimized to annoy people into spending money. We're seeing not only microtransactions baked into the single player, but also loot boxes, and cryptotrash looks like it's on the way. It can always get worse.
One more day in the gaming industry, I suppose. We just can't have nice things.
2012
Who could have thought basic geometry could get so intense?
In Super Hexagon, yiu play as a triangle translating around a hexagon at the center of the screen. Lines, parallel to the hexagon's sides, will come from the edges of the screen, and you have to dodge them, using the left and right keys. Your objective is to survive for 60 seconds or longer.
It sounds simple enough, and that's because it is. Super Hexagon is a masterpiece of minimalism, a game with a simple visual style, that's easy to understand and control, but is devilishly challenging, and that will have you spend hours trying to master it.
This is one of those games in which you are going to suffer embarrassing defeats in your first attempt, possibly not making it to a fifth of the 60 second goal the game expects of you. But it's also one of those "one more try" kind of games that have you playing for a while, and before long, you'll be moving to the next stage.
Of course, a lot hinges on whether you enjoy the chiptune soundtrack that accompanies each stage. Personally, I feel like it enhances the experience a lot. It's also very enjoyable: I even listen to it outside of the game. But I can see someone immediately giving up on the game because of its music.
Not me, though. I persevered, and I witnessed the end. I have very fond memories of chilling with this game.
In Super Hexagon, yiu play as a triangle translating around a hexagon at the center of the screen. Lines, parallel to the hexagon's sides, will come from the edges of the screen, and you have to dodge them, using the left and right keys. Your objective is to survive for 60 seconds or longer.
It sounds simple enough, and that's because it is. Super Hexagon is a masterpiece of minimalism, a game with a simple visual style, that's easy to understand and control, but is devilishly challenging, and that will have you spend hours trying to master it.
This is one of those games in which you are going to suffer embarrassing defeats in your first attempt, possibly not making it to a fifth of the 60 second goal the game expects of you. But it's also one of those "one more try" kind of games that have you playing for a while, and before long, you'll be moving to the next stage.
Of course, a lot hinges on whether you enjoy the chiptune soundtrack that accompanies each stage. Personally, I feel like it enhances the experience a lot. It's also very enjoyable: I even listen to it outside of the game. But I can see someone immediately giving up on the game because of its music.
Not me, though. I persevered, and I witnessed the end. I have very fond memories of chilling with this game.
2003
...You know, I'm not even mad. At least it isn't X6.
That's not to say X7 is remotely good. It's not. It's a bad idea at it's very foundation and it could at best hope to be a mixed bag. X7 is a game that's aggressively boring -- a terrible quality, and I pity anyone who paid full price for this back on the PS2 -- but at least it's not utterly infuriating. It's an improvement.
Mega Man X7 attempts to bring the X formula to 3D environments. While the game is still a sidescroller in some areas, in others, you're able to move in every direction while seeing your character from a top-down view. Basic character actions are otherwise still the same: you jump, you dash, and you attack.
There are many issues with this 3D thing. For one, the pacing of the game was made slower, probably to control loading or framerate issues. Character animations take very long and they move noticeably slower, to the point even the 2D sidescrolling stages feel sluggish. It could be just that stages are longer overall -- some have four or five areas -- but the whole game drags.
Then you have the two biggest struggles games usually have when moving to 3D: collision and camera. The game's colliders are odd all around, and from the intro stage you can already get a feel for how weird climbing walls is. As for the camera, it and its positioning feel like they're from a completely different game, like a slow-paced JRPG, instead of an action one. Some stages have you going upfront against gaps, and they force you to be ultra careful to compensate for the awkward viewpoint.
All of these things -- slower pace, odd collision and awkward understanding of distances -- kind of wreck Zero, whose Z-Saber now feels more like a lightstick. Some people swear by him in this game, but I only kept him in the back for his double jump and counterattack -- anything else and I'd expect to take some damage back. The flipside is that, while melee sucks, for projectile attacks, there's an auto-lock-on function that automatically targets nearby enemies, so those characters are far easier to play.
This is a good example of what I mean when I say that, being a bad idea at its core, X7 could at most hope to be a mixed bag. The lock-on mechanic trivializes ranged combat: there's no need to line up shots anymore, and trying to be precise with charge shots is an inefficient way to play. It's much better to turn on auto-fire and just spam lemons. Yet, adding lock-on was the right choice. Without it, the game might as well have been unplayable since there's no way this camera and character movement would allow anyone to aim.
Anyway, I mention charge shots, but in this game, X actually stays on the sidelines, being tired of fighting and having decided to take a support post within the Maverick Hunters. The game introduces a new group of antagonists in the Red Alert, a group of initially well-intended reploids who one day, mysteriously turn ev-- it's Sigma. It's just Sigma. He's back, in a convenient new body, and he's up to his usual bullcrap again. Anyway.
Series newcomer Axl, originally working for Red Alert, leaves the group when he begins to question their goals, joining the Maverick Hunters shortly after. Axl is much maligned by X7's players, and while that's not entirely undeserved, I find that a new protagonist was a good step for a franchise that would have been lucky to just grow stale. Plus, Axl's youth and brashness plays off of X and Zero pretty well. And-- his link to Red Alert helps kickstart the story.
On the other hand, it doesn't help his case that he's being introduced in one of the worst games in the franchise, nor that he's rather wimpy, gameplay-wise. He has an ability that allows him to shapeshift into certain (five-ish total) types of enemy in the game, but doing so is more likely to get him killed than anything else. Also, since he lacks a charge shot, I'm willing to bet he's caused at least one person who didn't know about the auto-fire option to hurt their hands pretty badly.
You can unlock X as a playable character. He even gets a new armor in this game, which, keeping the tradition from X5 and X6, sucks. But to unlock X, you have to go through at least half of the game, and worse: you have to rescue 64 reploids for him to join the fight. Yes, the rescue list was brought back from X6 with exactly the same issues.
Once again, you need to reload a save if a reploid dies, which in turn forces you to suicide out of the stage every once in a while to save the game and not lose the ones you've rescued. Once again, the little clowns carry upgrades that, while not mandatory this time around, do a lot towards making the game more bearable by making Axl less of a pushover. And yes, power-ups only apply to the character who picked them up -- how did you guess that?
The good part is that, with the exception of one particularly atrocious stage (hint: BURN TO THE GROUND), the reploids are mostly easy to rescue, there's no kamikaze-ing over cliffs to try and reach them in time. And since the stage design is, for the most part, less annoying, all it does is bog down the game into a grindy exercise in repetition.
Which is really what X7 is: tedious. It's a game where everything is sluggish, where game systems force you to slow down, where combat is reduced to holding down a button... the game has a ride chaser stage, like X4 and X5, but that stage forces you to keep a low speed to collect small items. Heart tanks and subtanks don't make an exciting sound when picked up... even death animations no longer feel impactful, being more likely to make you snore.
But it is a finished game, one for which there was a real, if futile, attempt to make work. Stages are coherent, bosses make sense and are fully fleshed out, the storytelling isn't too bad (although, as always, Japanese voices are recommended), and they even gave Sigma this really good boss theme. I can respect that effort, even if I never want to touch the final product again.
That's not to say X7 is remotely good. It's not. It's a bad idea at it's very foundation and it could at best hope to be a mixed bag. X7 is a game that's aggressively boring -- a terrible quality, and I pity anyone who paid full price for this back on the PS2 -- but at least it's not utterly infuriating. It's an improvement.
Mega Man X7 attempts to bring the X formula to 3D environments. While the game is still a sidescroller in some areas, in others, you're able to move in every direction while seeing your character from a top-down view. Basic character actions are otherwise still the same: you jump, you dash, and you attack.
There are many issues with this 3D thing. For one, the pacing of the game was made slower, probably to control loading or framerate issues. Character animations take very long and they move noticeably slower, to the point even the 2D sidescrolling stages feel sluggish. It could be just that stages are longer overall -- some have four or five areas -- but the whole game drags.
Then you have the two biggest struggles games usually have when moving to 3D: collision and camera. The game's colliders are odd all around, and from the intro stage you can already get a feel for how weird climbing walls is. As for the camera, it and its positioning feel like they're from a completely different game, like a slow-paced JRPG, instead of an action one. Some stages have you going upfront against gaps, and they force you to be ultra careful to compensate for the awkward viewpoint.
All of these things -- slower pace, odd collision and awkward understanding of distances -- kind of wreck Zero, whose Z-Saber now feels more like a lightstick. Some people swear by him in this game, but I only kept him in the back for his double jump and counterattack -- anything else and I'd expect to take some damage back. The flipside is that, while melee sucks, for projectile attacks, there's an auto-lock-on function that automatically targets nearby enemies, so those characters are far easier to play.
This is a good example of what I mean when I say that, being a bad idea at its core, X7 could at most hope to be a mixed bag. The lock-on mechanic trivializes ranged combat: there's no need to line up shots anymore, and trying to be precise with charge shots is an inefficient way to play. It's much better to turn on auto-fire and just spam lemons. Yet, adding lock-on was the right choice. Without it, the game might as well have been unplayable since there's no way this camera and character movement would allow anyone to aim.
Anyway, I mention charge shots, but in this game, X actually stays on the sidelines, being tired of fighting and having decided to take a support post within the Maverick Hunters. The game introduces a new group of antagonists in the Red Alert, a group of initially well-intended reploids who one day, mysteriously turn ev-- it's Sigma. It's just Sigma. He's back, in a convenient new body, and he's up to his usual bullcrap again. Anyway.
Series newcomer Axl, originally working for Red Alert, leaves the group when he begins to question their goals, joining the Maverick Hunters shortly after. Axl is much maligned by X7's players, and while that's not entirely undeserved, I find that a new protagonist was a good step for a franchise that would have been lucky to just grow stale. Plus, Axl's youth and brashness plays off of X and Zero pretty well. And-- his link to Red Alert helps kickstart the story.
On the other hand, it doesn't help his case that he's being introduced in one of the worst games in the franchise, nor that he's rather wimpy, gameplay-wise. He has an ability that allows him to shapeshift into certain (five-ish total) types of enemy in the game, but doing so is more likely to get him killed than anything else. Also, since he lacks a charge shot, I'm willing to bet he's caused at least one person who didn't know about the auto-fire option to hurt their hands pretty badly.
You can unlock X as a playable character. He even gets a new armor in this game, which, keeping the tradition from X5 and X6, sucks. But to unlock X, you have to go through at least half of the game, and worse: you have to rescue 64 reploids for him to join the fight. Yes, the rescue list was brought back from X6 with exactly the same issues.
Once again, you need to reload a save if a reploid dies, which in turn forces you to suicide out of the stage every once in a while to save the game and not lose the ones you've rescued. Once again, the little clowns carry upgrades that, while not mandatory this time around, do a lot towards making the game more bearable by making Axl less of a pushover. And yes, power-ups only apply to the character who picked them up -- how did you guess that?
The good part is that, with the exception of one particularly atrocious stage (hint: BURN TO THE GROUND), the reploids are mostly easy to rescue, there's no kamikaze-ing over cliffs to try and reach them in time. And since the stage design is, for the most part, less annoying, all it does is bog down the game into a grindy exercise in repetition.
Which is really what X7 is: tedious. It's a game where everything is sluggish, where game systems force you to slow down, where combat is reduced to holding down a button... the game has a ride chaser stage, like X4 and X5, but that stage forces you to keep a low speed to collect small items. Heart tanks and subtanks don't make an exciting sound when picked up... even death animations no longer feel impactful, being more likely to make you snore.
But it is a finished game, one for which there was a real, if futile, attempt to make work. Stages are coherent, bosses make sense and are fully fleshed out, the storytelling isn't too bad (although, as always, Japanese voices are recommended), and they even gave Sigma this really good boss theme. I can respect that effort, even if I never want to touch the final product again.
Kingdoms of Amalur is a game with a bit of a cult following that actually made a resurgence recently with the release of a remaster. Back in its day, though, you were more likely to get to know the game not because of reviews and such, but because of the controversy surrounding it -- specifically, the bankruptcy of its developer, 38 Studios. How they allegedly defrauded the state of Rhode Island out of millions to make a WoW-killer MMO that only ever saw a teaser trailer, and how Amalur was the only game they managed to put out.
If anything, Kingdoms of Amalur makes an incredible first impression. Far from the grittiness that plagued the generation it came out in, the game uses a lot of vibrant colors, which does a lot to further the fantasy setting and make every place feel wonderful and unreal. Environments are also highly detailed, whether they are indoors or outdoors.
It also plays in a fascinating way with the concept of Fate: every creature in this world has its destiny already decided from the start, and nothing they do will ever change it. Some people can actually look into the threads of Fate of others and can tell them when and how they'll die, and even that knowledge cannot save anyone.
This comes into play as a war begins right as the game starts. In this world, the races of humans, elves and Fae live in relative harmony with each other. Relative, because the immortal Fae dislike the mortal races, and vice versa, but isolation makes it so conflict is avoided. That is, until the Fae living to the east are corrupted by a usurper king, Gadflow, and become the Tuatha Deohn, or just Tuatha, for short.
Gadflow proceeds to lead these immortal warriors into a war to exterminate the mortal races and corrupt the remaining Fae. Humans and elves are screwed, because besides the fact that the Tuatha are immortal, the threads of Fate have been looked at: Gadflow is going to win this war, and no mortal creature is destined to live past his onslaught. That is, until you come in.
As the game starts, you are dead.
Well, not quite. You did die, but you awaken at Allestar Tower, to find that you have been resurrected by a magical apparatus called the Well of Souls. You're the first of the Well's successes, and also the last, since the Tuatha attack shortly after you awaken. After escaping the tower, you begin to realize that, because you were brought back to life, you are not bound to Fate -- everything it had in store it you only reached the moment of your death. You also don't exist in anyone else's Fate, so the moment you enter others' lives, their destinies can change.
This is the thing that stuck with me the most from the game, as it's a fascinating way to set up a chosen one type of narrative. It's not that your characeter is especially talented or has been named in some prophecy: much to the contrary, the reason they're special is exactly because they're nobody at all: a person that should not exist, and who now intrudes in their stories to change the ending. It's so good.
That said, it's just about the last time the game's story and setting feels remarkable, since most of what's left is painfully generic fantasy RPG lore. This game has a lot of lore and backstory around minimal details, which is quite amazing from a production standpoint, but I will admit, I skipped over a lot of it for finding it too bland.
This is a game from people who (purportedly) used to make MMOs. If you want to play a single-player MMO, Amalur is your game, in a good and in a bad way. The world is so vast, the character customization, deep, the lore, expansive, and the quests, so mundane. Every modern theme park MMO has its share of fetch quests, and they're certainly not missing here: useless quests that offer little benefit other than the dopamine hit from ticking a box.
Okay, that's a bit unfair to say: like the average MMO, some quest lines have more structure and wind up being very fun, like when you hunt an ancient witch who's possessing other mages, or free a Fae from a human prison, or craft items for a sleazy merchant who wants to scam people and who scolds you for making items of actual value.
Yes, I did say crafting, and in fact, there is more than one of such systems embedded into the game. You can brew potions, forge equipment, and craft gems to customize that equipment. The result of each will depend on the components used, their quality, and your skill level in that craft. There are nine skills in the game, and while you'll probably leave the crafting related ones for later, choosing what to upgrade next can take a few moments of your time.
This is but one of the facets of the character customization Amalur offers. Aside from customizing the character's race and appearance in the beginning of the game, you get to pick from several skills, and, most importantly, you get to mix and match their combat capabilities from the three skill trees. Amalur doesn't have a set-in-stone class system: it instead offers you three trees that you can spend points on at any time: Might, Finesse and Sorcery.
Yes, those trees do translate to Warrior, Rogue and Mage, which are the basic classes in every RPG ever, but Amalur's system has two advantages: One, you can make hybrid classes, with the game even honoring that choice by giving different perks depending on how your points are distributed; and two, the skill points can be reset for a relatively small fee at NPCs called Fateweavers, effectively enabling you to change your class whenever you want to.
It's hard not to be tempted to do so, too: the combat in Amalur is extremely satisfying. The same care that went into creating those detailed environments went into making fluid and great-looking combat animations. The fighting does a wonderful job at balancing a fast pace while still keeping the weight and the impact for each attack. Every weapon feels great to use, and the skills, especially the magic, feel really powerful.
Ultimately, however, the way so much of this game is just generic RPG elements -- run-of-the-mill quest design, theme-park like world, bland lore -- prevents it from forming an identity of its own. It's easy to remember the great combat and some of the plot, it's easy to enjoy the character customization, but everything else just meshes together.
Your enjoyment of the game will depend on how easily can you look past those unremarkable elements. Personally, I found it quite easy. There were moments where it felt like I was handling busywork, but after finishing it, I felt like going back and trying the game again, with a different class. Maybe I'll do that with Re-Reckoning, some time soon? Not if I ever want to move forward with my backlog, though.
If anything, Kingdoms of Amalur makes an incredible first impression. Far from the grittiness that plagued the generation it came out in, the game uses a lot of vibrant colors, which does a lot to further the fantasy setting and make every place feel wonderful and unreal. Environments are also highly detailed, whether they are indoors or outdoors.
It also plays in a fascinating way with the concept of Fate: every creature in this world has its destiny already decided from the start, and nothing they do will ever change it. Some people can actually look into the threads of Fate of others and can tell them when and how they'll die, and even that knowledge cannot save anyone.
This comes into play as a war begins right as the game starts. In this world, the races of humans, elves and Fae live in relative harmony with each other. Relative, because the immortal Fae dislike the mortal races, and vice versa, but isolation makes it so conflict is avoided. That is, until the Fae living to the east are corrupted by a usurper king, Gadflow, and become the Tuatha Deohn, or just Tuatha, for short.
Gadflow proceeds to lead these immortal warriors into a war to exterminate the mortal races and corrupt the remaining Fae. Humans and elves are screwed, because besides the fact that the Tuatha are immortal, the threads of Fate have been looked at: Gadflow is going to win this war, and no mortal creature is destined to live past his onslaught. That is, until you come in.
As the game starts, you are dead.
Well, not quite. You did die, but you awaken at Allestar Tower, to find that you have been resurrected by a magical apparatus called the Well of Souls. You're the first of the Well's successes, and also the last, since the Tuatha attack shortly after you awaken. After escaping the tower, you begin to realize that, because you were brought back to life, you are not bound to Fate -- everything it had in store it you only reached the moment of your death. You also don't exist in anyone else's Fate, so the moment you enter others' lives, their destinies can change.
This is the thing that stuck with me the most from the game, as it's a fascinating way to set up a chosen one type of narrative. It's not that your characeter is especially talented or has been named in some prophecy: much to the contrary, the reason they're special is exactly because they're nobody at all: a person that should not exist, and who now intrudes in their stories to change the ending. It's so good.
That said, it's just about the last time the game's story and setting feels remarkable, since most of what's left is painfully generic fantasy RPG lore. This game has a lot of lore and backstory around minimal details, which is quite amazing from a production standpoint, but I will admit, I skipped over a lot of it for finding it too bland.
This is a game from people who (purportedly) used to make MMOs. If you want to play a single-player MMO, Amalur is your game, in a good and in a bad way. The world is so vast, the character customization, deep, the lore, expansive, and the quests, so mundane. Every modern theme park MMO has its share of fetch quests, and they're certainly not missing here: useless quests that offer little benefit other than the dopamine hit from ticking a box.
Okay, that's a bit unfair to say: like the average MMO, some quest lines have more structure and wind up being very fun, like when you hunt an ancient witch who's possessing other mages, or free a Fae from a human prison, or craft items for a sleazy merchant who wants to scam people and who scolds you for making items of actual value.
Yes, I did say crafting, and in fact, there is more than one of such systems embedded into the game. You can brew potions, forge equipment, and craft gems to customize that equipment. The result of each will depend on the components used, their quality, and your skill level in that craft. There are nine skills in the game, and while you'll probably leave the crafting related ones for later, choosing what to upgrade next can take a few moments of your time.
This is but one of the facets of the character customization Amalur offers. Aside from customizing the character's race and appearance in the beginning of the game, you get to pick from several skills, and, most importantly, you get to mix and match their combat capabilities from the three skill trees. Amalur doesn't have a set-in-stone class system: it instead offers you three trees that you can spend points on at any time: Might, Finesse and Sorcery.
Yes, those trees do translate to Warrior, Rogue and Mage, which are the basic classes in every RPG ever, but Amalur's system has two advantages: One, you can make hybrid classes, with the game even honoring that choice by giving different perks depending on how your points are distributed; and two, the skill points can be reset for a relatively small fee at NPCs called Fateweavers, effectively enabling you to change your class whenever you want to.
It's hard not to be tempted to do so, too: the combat in Amalur is extremely satisfying. The same care that went into creating those detailed environments went into making fluid and great-looking combat animations. The fighting does a wonderful job at balancing a fast pace while still keeping the weight and the impact for each attack. Every weapon feels great to use, and the skills, especially the magic, feel really powerful.
Ultimately, however, the way so much of this game is just generic RPG elements -- run-of-the-mill quest design, theme-park like world, bland lore -- prevents it from forming an identity of its own. It's easy to remember the great combat and some of the plot, it's easy to enjoy the character customization, but everything else just meshes together.
Your enjoyment of the game will depend on how easily can you look past those unremarkable elements. Personally, I found it quite easy. There were moments where it felt like I was handling busywork, but after finishing it, I felt like going back and trying the game again, with a different class. Maybe I'll do that with Re-Reckoning, some time soon? Not if I ever want to move forward with my backlog, though.
2009
I really want to revisit Demon's Souls some time soon. It took me ten years, but playing Dark Souls recently finally made Souls games click for me, and I'm curious if I just failed to understand Demon's Souls, or if Dark Souls was just substantially better. I actually dropped DeS five times before finishing it, and I quite literally brute forced my way to the Platinum trophy.
As it is, though, it's a really memorable experience, hitting horror game vibes better than lots of horror games do, but still offering a deep and replayable action RPG. Maybe when I have a PS5, I'll take a deeper dive into the origins of the Souls series.
As it is, though, it's a really memorable experience, hitting horror game vibes better than lots of horror games do, but still offering a deep and replayable action RPG. Maybe when I have a PS5, I'll take a deeper dive into the origins of the Souls series.
2013
Gone Home is just incredible. Before playing it, I'd heard what the game was about in very few words, and I thought it was just going to be an adventure game about 90s nostalgia. I was wrong.
The game follows a woman as she returns to her family home after spending some time studying abroad. Having never lived in this house before, she walks in to find it empty, and immediately discovers a note left by her younger sister, apologizing for not being there to see her, claiming it was impossible. And so, the older sister, who is mostly silent, explores this odd house she never lived in, searching for further clues from her sibling about what transpired in her absence.
Gone Home is a quintessential experience of environment storytelling, and an example of how games can tell the same story much differently than linear mediums can. More than just finding the younger sister, it's a game about walking through these odd halls and rooms yourself, in a house that, initially, seems so foreign and scary, but gradually begins to open up to you; about learning about the houses' inhabitants, their likes and dislikes, their habits, not from being told directly, but from finding pieces of their lives strewn about.
All of this -- the picture it paints in your head of this typical American family -- enhances the central narrative thread told through the sister's notes, which is such a beautiful and heartfelt story.
Definitely one of my favorite narrative-driven games. I love it.
The game follows a woman as she returns to her family home after spending some time studying abroad. Having never lived in this house before, she walks in to find it empty, and immediately discovers a note left by her younger sister, apologizing for not being there to see her, claiming it was impossible. And so, the older sister, who is mostly silent, explores this odd house she never lived in, searching for further clues from her sibling about what transpired in her absence.
Gone Home is a quintessential experience of environment storytelling, and an example of how games can tell the same story much differently than linear mediums can. More than just finding the younger sister, it's a game about walking through these odd halls and rooms yourself, in a house that, initially, seems so foreign and scary, but gradually begins to open up to you; about learning about the houses' inhabitants, their likes and dislikes, their habits, not from being told directly, but from finding pieces of their lives strewn about.
All of this -- the picture it paints in your head of this typical American family -- enhances the central narrative thread told through the sister's notes, which is such a beautiful and heartfelt story.
Definitely one of my favorite narrative-driven games. I love it.
2012
Telltale's The Walking Dead is an adventure, story-focused game centered around Lee, a man living in a world ravaged by the zombie apocalypse. It made waves back when it released due to how it approached a narrative-based experience, as well as because of one of its main characters, Clementine.
It's undoubtedly an influential game, but one that never quite clicked with me, even though I'm very fond of story-driven games. Seeing more recent games that do what it does better, I think my dislike boils down to just two things: the game being too ambitious for its own sake, and the script not being that great.
When I talk about ambition, I'm not necessarily referring to tech, though it has to be said, it's one of the game's biggest detractors. Telltale's engine has long been known to be an issue, and TWD makes that pretty evident. It's a clunky game, with severe framerate issues despite not looking all that good and presenting rather wonky animations. Were it not for the fact that the voice acting and general direction were pretty good, the game would have been dead in the water as a story.
It's more about the fact that this sort of branching narrative, with many life-or-death decisions, is a production hell. The amount of branches can rise exponentially with each decision, and unless you keep them under control, the game can be outright impossible to develop. The ways in which TWD manages its branching are... less than elegant.
The game was originally released in an episodic format, with five different installments that tell the story of Lee from the beginning of the zombie apocalypse to his fate in the ravaged world. A lot is put towards reminding you that each character will remember your choices and might resent you if you wrong them in any way.
The reality is that choices will almost never matter, and the ones that do will probably not make it past the episode boundary. So much is said about choices that result in character deaths, but the reality is, characters are basically treated as disposable, constantly dying and being replaced as the story proceeds.
Often, the game will give you a contrived choice to save one character or another, but then just a few scenes later, it will kill the survivor in an even more forced manner, or otherwise just remove them from the story. Episode 1 alone has two instances of this, and it's an issue that plagues the entire series.
This ties into how much I abhor the game's script: for starters, character motivations make no freaking sense. People in this world are incredibly petty, prone to out-of-character childish tantrums, and you can spoil them all you want and still have them stab you in the back because the plot needs them too. Some people will commit suicide because the script needs them out, or sacrifice themselves for people they openly hate. It's insane.
Plus, every tired zombie cliché in the book is here, and then some. I respect clichés as a way to construct stories, but this is a game where zombies will telepathically make people trip, will materialize in perfectly safe areas, will attack quickly and relentlessly in the worst possible moments... Heck, in one particular occasion, the script will summon a horde of god knows how many running zombies in the middle of nowhere, in broad daylight, and try to play it straight. It's just not good writing.
Playing it straight is, to me, the nail in the coffin for TWD. When I look at something like Until Dawn, which came out three years later, that feels pretty clear. Not to go too deep into that game, but Until Dawn uses almost exactly the same mechanical framework and also tells something of a horror story with a lot of shock value.
However, UD establishes pretty quickly that it's trying to emulate a very particular sort of horror flick, and also that every character in the cast has exactly two brain cells and both are focused on getting laid. Whether you like the game as a whole or not, these facts make it a lot easier to accept when those same characters make stupid decisions. Contrast with TWD, though, it actually tries to pass off the dumbassery of the cast as serious and emotional, and it's very tough to swallow.
In fact, aside from Lee and Clementine, the only characters I even remember from the game without having to look at my notes are the ones that die in particularly infuriating ways. And honestly, even for the main two, their story only starts to pick up in the fourth episode, with the first three being so worthless I doubt I would have finished the series if I didn't already have the physical version with all episodes back when I played it.
Even then, the final two episodes offer a mix of really good storytelling moments and really bad ones instead of mostly bad ones. The ending is a real tearjerker, but all in all, I don't think it was worth it to endure the entire series just for that moment.
It's undoubtedly an influential game, but one that never quite clicked with me, even though I'm very fond of story-driven games. Seeing more recent games that do what it does better, I think my dislike boils down to just two things: the game being too ambitious for its own sake, and the script not being that great.
When I talk about ambition, I'm not necessarily referring to tech, though it has to be said, it's one of the game's biggest detractors. Telltale's engine has long been known to be an issue, and TWD makes that pretty evident. It's a clunky game, with severe framerate issues despite not looking all that good and presenting rather wonky animations. Were it not for the fact that the voice acting and general direction were pretty good, the game would have been dead in the water as a story.
It's more about the fact that this sort of branching narrative, with many life-or-death decisions, is a production hell. The amount of branches can rise exponentially with each decision, and unless you keep them under control, the game can be outright impossible to develop. The ways in which TWD manages its branching are... less than elegant.
The game was originally released in an episodic format, with five different installments that tell the story of Lee from the beginning of the zombie apocalypse to his fate in the ravaged world. A lot is put towards reminding you that each character will remember your choices and might resent you if you wrong them in any way.
The reality is that choices will almost never matter, and the ones that do will probably not make it past the episode boundary. So much is said about choices that result in character deaths, but the reality is, characters are basically treated as disposable, constantly dying and being replaced as the story proceeds.
Often, the game will give you a contrived choice to save one character or another, but then just a few scenes later, it will kill the survivor in an even more forced manner, or otherwise just remove them from the story. Episode 1 alone has two instances of this, and it's an issue that plagues the entire series.
This ties into how much I abhor the game's script: for starters, character motivations make no freaking sense. People in this world are incredibly petty, prone to out-of-character childish tantrums, and you can spoil them all you want and still have them stab you in the back because the plot needs them too. Some people will commit suicide because the script needs them out, or sacrifice themselves for people they openly hate. It's insane.
Plus, every tired zombie cliché in the book is here, and then some. I respect clichés as a way to construct stories, but this is a game where zombies will telepathically make people trip, will materialize in perfectly safe areas, will attack quickly and relentlessly in the worst possible moments... Heck, in one particular occasion, the script will summon a horde of god knows how many running zombies in the middle of nowhere, in broad daylight, and try to play it straight. It's just not good writing.
Playing it straight is, to me, the nail in the coffin for TWD. When I look at something like Until Dawn, which came out three years later, that feels pretty clear. Not to go too deep into that game, but Until Dawn uses almost exactly the same mechanical framework and also tells something of a horror story with a lot of shock value.
However, UD establishes pretty quickly that it's trying to emulate a very particular sort of horror flick, and also that every character in the cast has exactly two brain cells and both are focused on getting laid. Whether you like the game as a whole or not, these facts make it a lot easier to accept when those same characters make stupid decisions. Contrast with TWD, though, it actually tries to pass off the dumbassery of the cast as serious and emotional, and it's very tough to swallow.
In fact, aside from Lee and Clementine, the only characters I even remember from the game without having to look at my notes are the ones that die in particularly infuriating ways. And honestly, even for the main two, their story only starts to pick up in the fourth episode, with the first three being so worthless I doubt I would have finished the series if I didn't already have the physical version with all episodes back when I played it.
Even then, the final two episodes offer a mix of really good storytelling moments and really bad ones instead of mostly bad ones. The ending is a real tearjerker, but all in all, I don't think it was worth it to endure the entire series just for that moment.
2009
And yet it moves. In a clunky, immensely tedious fashion, but it moves.
AYIM is a physics-based puzzle platformer rendered in a collage style that's built around a simple gimmick: you can rotate the screen by 90° degrees as many times as you like. The basic idea is that you can gain momentum in one direction, then turn the screen around to go in another direction.
If any of that makes you excited... Don't. AYIM was so atrocious, after playing it, I forbade myself from buying other games of its genre on Steam, because every one of those ended up being like this: boring, janky, with gameplay that is completely inconsistent and nowhere near shippable.
The character in AYIM moves at such a leisurely place, you can, no exaggeration, check Twitter while you play. That is enough to make the experience completely tedious, but the physics are what make the game move into infuriating territory. For one, this is a game about launching yourself around... and yet it has fall damage. Very random fall damage, even: sometimes you'll survive high falls, but die from small leaps.
There's a mechanic through which, supposedly, you can mitigate your fall if you land on a slope. I never got it to work anywhere other than the tutorial, and even then it took some effort. Every other mechanic the game introduces is inconsistent like this, and the worst one has to be the bamboo springboards.
Some stages have these bamboos sticking out from a wall the wall that you have jump on and bounce off of like a springboard. However, the timing and accuracy the game demands is bizarre, and the whole thing requires more luck than anything else. The funny thing is, I googled this mechanic when it got me stuck, and was met with several people that weren't able to solve it either, and just dropped the game right there. That's when I knew I had wasted my money.
I suppose the collage-like scenery is somewhat fetching to some -- personally, I think it looks hideous -- but it alone certainly cannot carry a game that lacks sounds, plot, or even functional mechanics. And Yet It Moves is a frustrating, unrewarding experience that brings about the worst of its genre, and should be avoided at all costs.
AYIM is a physics-based puzzle platformer rendered in a collage style that's built around a simple gimmick: you can rotate the screen by 90° degrees as many times as you like. The basic idea is that you can gain momentum in one direction, then turn the screen around to go in another direction.
If any of that makes you excited... Don't. AYIM was so atrocious, after playing it, I forbade myself from buying other games of its genre on Steam, because every one of those ended up being like this: boring, janky, with gameplay that is completely inconsistent and nowhere near shippable.
The character in AYIM moves at such a leisurely place, you can, no exaggeration, check Twitter while you play. That is enough to make the experience completely tedious, but the physics are what make the game move into infuriating territory. For one, this is a game about launching yourself around... and yet it has fall damage. Very random fall damage, even: sometimes you'll survive high falls, but die from small leaps.
There's a mechanic through which, supposedly, you can mitigate your fall if you land on a slope. I never got it to work anywhere other than the tutorial, and even then it took some effort. Every other mechanic the game introduces is inconsistent like this, and the worst one has to be the bamboo springboards.
Some stages have these bamboos sticking out from a wall the wall that you have jump on and bounce off of like a springboard. However, the timing and accuracy the game demands is bizarre, and the whole thing requires more luck than anything else. The funny thing is, I googled this mechanic when it got me stuck, and was met with several people that weren't able to solve it either, and just dropped the game right there. That's when I knew I had wasted my money.
I suppose the collage-like scenery is somewhat fetching to some -- personally, I think it looks hideous -- but it alone certainly cannot carry a game that lacks sounds, plot, or even functional mechanics. And Yet It Moves is a frustrating, unrewarding experience that brings about the worst of its genre, and should be avoided at all costs.