Graphix: 10/10
Story: 6/10
Art: 11/10
Gameplay: 5/10

a perfect representation of everything that makes gaming epic -- reviewed in the only way that matters

Alright World of Goo; you asked for the truth, now here it is.

I love you: you're beautiful, you're charming, and I can't fucking stand you.

Some may look at your art style and see it as derivative, the amalgamation of Invader Zim-ian quirky-and-edgy joy through the scope of Newgrounds circa 2007, but I love it all the same; It reminds me of the best of times and the worst of times all same.

Even your music, simple and stylistically homogenous as it is, still brought a smile to my face...

No, I'll tell you the reason I truly can't stand you anymore.

I wish there was a nicer way to say it, but... It's your physics. Uncooperative, clunky, grueling, by any other name the word is just as true: My time with you was one of constant struggle. I would labor on marvelous constructions, towers to symbolize all you stood for, and a meager misplacement would have minutes of work, as many as five, or ten even, crumbling to the floor.

First, I blamed God, for forsaking me once more; then, my crosshairs were directed at gravity, the loathsome force; but eventually, I knew the true patron of my patronization.

It was you, World of Goo.

My towers, my creations, meant nothing to you. You would scoff at my attempts, laugh at my failure, and refuse to even glance my way at my myriad victories. It was you -- It was always you.

So knowing this, I have no choice but to part ways with you, wistful World, glorious Goo, Opulent of. You give me no choice, and your bitter banter at my behest broke my brain. Our time was short, but a single second longer in your company could only spell disaster...

Farewell,
Roxy S. Gaming

The Goddess in Green sighs, tracing an eyeline between the girl across from her and the cards in her hand. It’s a stacked deck, no matter how you cut it, yet still the girl agonizes over her decisions. Ten, maybe twenty minutes ago, this was fun, exciting even, but with the fifth reshuffling of the deck, the allure had gotten old. Yet still the girl crunched numbers in her head, a million simulations running into the same walls, chasing a fairy tale solution. Two rerolls, a move, three interactables, Witchfire… No, a reroll, two interactables, Make ‘Em Bleed, move, interactable… Maybe start with the Witchfire –

“Please, play something. Magik’s dead. You still have a revive. What are you doing?”

“Nah shut up I’m cooking.”

She wasn’t. No amount of rerolls would save this botch job of an operation, and the reality was dawning on her. She gazed out onto the field – A half-vampire, a moody Russian, and a catty goth against an endless sea of hellacious hellforged and nefarious Nazis – and laid her face in her palms. The Goddess’s army was too strong, too quick, too lucky… A floodgate of poor excuses couldn’t hold back the waves of embarrassment washing to shore. The girl held the glowing red button, ending yet another turn. The horde consumed her heroes, and everything went black.

Bolting awake in bed, the haunting charm of the abbey provided little in the way of respite. Defeat had soured the girl’s mood, and even the cheery faces of close friends, their tiresome quips ever ready, couldn’t save the day. It was all so… morose. Until he, tall, firm, decked in dark leather, came into view. Towering over her, her heart would skip a beat at the mere sight of him, her brain melt from a wayward glance of his ruby red eyes. At the subtle hint of his fangs, she would swoon, unable to catch herself…

He was Blade, the Damphyr, and he was the lone purpose for her struggle. Her moniker, “The Hunter”, was an excuse, a pointless exposition to connect an unrequited A-to-B, a boy meets girl of a supernatural variety. Sure, evil mom, old gods, Salem, witches, whatever; the vampire had dug his teeth in, and she found no reason to complain. He made it all seem worth it… The countless hours in battle, locked in mortal combat with the Goddess in Green, the endless monotony of gamma coils and reforged cards, the insipid dialogue spewing from our compatriots… it was all worth it, to spend time with Blade.

Sixty hours, seventy missions, eighty days, thousands of cards. It all stacked up so neatly, but whereas the many found their thrills in the uninspired tale of The Hunter, or another showcase of The Avengers as prime show-stealers, I lay alone in a singular rationale for finishing this journey.

I played a sixty hour game because I think Blade is neat :)

"Uhhh, single's life is great, Roxy. I can play whatever I want... Today I money-matched Melty Blood in the bathroom!"

"The one down the hall."

"Yeah! Another great thing, you get your own light gun game. Uhhh, I shoot at Wild Dog, do you?"

"I play PlayStation Vita games in bed with my wife."

"...Oh. Yeah..."

"This is going to be a game touching on themes such as the rising cost of healthcare in the United States, racism and discrimination, environmentalism, and the forced displacement of Native Americans by both industrialization and settlers to the region."

"Okay, I get you."

"They're also gonna make the Native American stand-ins the most Justin Roiland-ass VAs you've ever heard. Some real 'Ah jeez Rick' type shit. A real High on Life type of beat. They're also shaped a bit like dicks. It's sincere."

"huh"

I know making even vaguely targeted statements is looked down upon, but the general consensus of Vividlope here is skewed by takes that frankly either don’t understand the game, refuse to approach it on it’s terms, or want it to be something that it just isn’t. Please don’t take this as personal slights, those who’ve made these statements; I’m just pushing back on what I see as misconceptions of the game.

Before that, my take: It’s cute! Game is really tough, to a brutal degree by the end of the game, but that’s okay! Mechanically, the game has flaws, but aesthetically it shines. I wish I had more to say, but uh. There!

Beyond that, I’ll leave it at a bunch of Statements I’ve seen about the game, here and otherwise, and responses to those statements.

--

“Enemies arbitrarily spawn and move semi-randomly. It’s Non-Design.”
Enemies spawn over time, and based on completion of the level. Specific spaces spawn enemies. Furthermore, while there are certain enemies that rely on a degree of random movement, each enemy has rules to them; not too dissimilar to the ghosts in Pac-Man. Learn the rules, and you can handle any one enemy. Don’t, you die. Simple as.

“I want it to be a casual PC platformer / it should be a puzzle game but it’s not!”
Nothing about it reads as casual beyond the first level’s batch of stages – Y’know, where you learn to play the game. It’s a tutorial. It’s by and large an extrapolation of Arcade game design; it’s not a puzzle game, it’s not a platformer, it’s feeding off the same roots as Qix, Dig Dug, Q-Bert, all that shit. The “puzzle twist” extends purely to some of the gimmicks of levels; panels “unpainting” themselves, slight navigational puzzles, the works. This is an arcade game.

“The movement is awkward / I can’t commit to certain movements!”
You can use an analog stick, but if you use the D-Pad (as the game strongly suggests when you launch it), the movement sticks to the grids the game wants you to play without being overly stiff. Furthermore… The game isn’t built around free movement, in a sense. You get precision by playing by their rules. You can jump two spaces, one if you hold back as you jump, and a Chess-like Knight jump if you hold hard left or right, relative to where you’re jumping.

“The developer’s response to difficulty tweaks is condescending!”
You are playing an easier version of a game where half the point is perfecting play to get a high rank. The only difference when playing on Easy is having the highest possible rank locked out. If you want to get the best ranking, play the game as it was originally intended. Sounds fair enough.

“I can fill in every space and only get an S/S+ rank!”
100%ing a board is important, but so is keeping an unbroken chain going. It’s Combos Baby

“It’s just like a Dreamcast game!”
Wrong. PSP Launch Title.

--

...And I'm still only giving it a 3.5, like most of the people I think had iffy reads on it here. C'est la vie! ¯\(ツ)/¯

The prior seconds pass with the enormity of centuries. Scattershot shrapnel peppers the asphalt, signaling the arrival of two street demons, both careening through air in a ludicrous display of car-nal car-nage. Like detached limbs, their wheels flail freely, in defiance of death itself, rolling to an uneventful stop against the guardrail. Launched beyond the rail’s comforting bounds, misfortuned motorists find their engines extinguished, their windshields splintered and scattered haphazardly. For what it’s worth, it's a spectacle with little to show for it; the same crumpled wreckages find themselves sprinting down the stretch once again, leaving little but metal and skid marks. Coming to my senses, parallel with the rail, I’m lightheaded and weak.

My ribs are a fine powder, my liver a congealed mass, my brain pulsing red-light, green-light pain and shock overdoses… but my machine roars to life. A gentle nudge of the accelerator eases her back on the straight-ahead, but an injection of noxious nitrous oxide pumps searing adrenaline through her veins – With a banshee’s scream, she climbs to 100, 120, 150, 200 miles per hour. The prying eyes piercing into the roll cage soon burn into spectral light, their lesser vehicles little more than dust against my almighty steed. Lost in the cacophony of merciless thieves, I give chase to secure what’s rightfully mine – The dizzying height, the brightest shine, the golden flow of first place. But my rivals, backstabbers and bastards all, seem poised to pilfer perfection from me once again.

It’s a trio ahead – The former deceased pair, and an impervious highway star leading the pack. In an endless stretch, it’d be a massacre, but with less than two miles left, the nerves start wearing me down. First is the rookie mistakes – a drift too harsh here, a grind against the median there, hell, even a full-scale collision to spice things up, but all too soon I’m peering down invisible crosshairs at the weakest link. Everything happens fast as I shotgun a final blast of nitro into a purring motor, my chariot a battering ram; the lesser of the twins crumples underfoot, ripped in two as hopeless fourth bashes into the corpse. The wiser twin falls just as simply; grinding against my steel chassis, they neglected to peek the eighteen-wheeler hurtling headlong. I can barely make out a resentful curse from the driver’s seat as the million-dollar machine is mulched.

And then, it was you, me, and the finish line. And brother, I wish our tale ended oh so simply, but either through fate or karma, neither of us were to receive fated first that day. It was as it always goes, in the United States, across Europe, to the far off shores of Asia – Even at our best, neither of us expected a humble family of four to be our downfall. You crashed into the van, as expected, but as if touched by a vengeful spirited, your shell bashed into me, and I into the monorail over yonder. Seeing this moment of weakness, hopeless fourth charges, pointless fifth overtakes, and… impossible sixth takes home the gold – My gold.

Still, I can’t help but laugh. Over a hundred gold metals, and I’m still caught off-guard, still left to ponder what-ifs and what-abouts. Pulling a swift 180, I curve my car along the backroad, glancing at the glistening lights in the rearview. With a smile, I hit boost once again… Launching myself directly into the busy highway, where a city bus embraces me at 90 miles per hour.

I wake, still slumped along the guardrail. The dual gods of speed soar overhead, colliding with the gathering crowd. With a flick, I boost back into the race. For one last time, let’s go for gold.