First off, just to get it out of the way - the Switch version performs really poorly. I have no problem overlooking performance defects in order to enjoy stuff on the Switch (Bowser's Fury is one of my gotys for sure!), but this is real rough. It is almost constantly evoking that stomach-churning feeling of trying to play a PC game that's far beyond the reaches of your specs - frame stutters, hitching, tearing, black screens of pure load, the works. At first I was convinced it was a stylistic choice, but then I saw some PC footage and realised I was essentially playing an entirely different game, with different lights and different particles and different, jaggier edges. Disappointing, but not altogether surprising - it does feel like the sun is setting on the era of the Nintendo Switch being the console of choice for indie game fun.
The game itself is... alright. Most of its flaws have been well-documented on Backloggd already, so I'll try to avoid repeating other people. The timer and objectives are tight little polygonal nooses around the player's neck that constrain what should be a game about the freedom of expressing. Sure, you can turn them off, but I'm generally opposed to disturbing the "default" configuration of a gameplay loop that has presumably been thought about and designed to be played as-is. You wouldn't start your first ever game of Doom by typing or 'iddqd' or 'idkfa' to get god mode and all the guns, would you? There's an unlockable free roam mode in here that feels like it should have swapped places with the main game - I don't think anyone's ever attempted photography as a form of time trial.
Movement is similarly restrictive and antithetical to the game's perceived purpose. The player moves slowly and awkwardly, which makes pixel-hunting for tiny scraps of photo feel like a huge chore - I couldn't help but make comparisons with last year's Paradise Killer, which seemed to revel in letting players Marvel vs Capcom their way across the landscape to hunt for little clues and ephemera. The rollerskates that the Macro DLC provides are a much-welcome but too-late addition, arriving at a point in the experience where the ceaseless tedium has already accumulated to a critical mass. The level layouts feel almost too big for the default walk-speed, but paradoxically too small for any kind of enjoyable rollerblading - I found myself hitching and twitching against geometry every half-minute or two, and the double jump very rarely does anything to help me navigate the environment except trigger clipping glitches that let you move around in the negative space behind the 3D world. I think I mostly used it to get on top of people in order to use them as stepping stones.
Speaking of the people - why are we never encouraged to photograph them? You can tell them to pose, sure, but why is the game more concerned about making you document 6 Pizza Box, 3 Toilet Roll, 9 Brick than recording the people who are living through what is presumed to be the end of time? It's a game that is ostensibly concerned with political struggle and material circumstance, but often ignores the social nature of existing in these kinda jankily-made spaces. BLM and ACAB and KILL FASCIST make for great spray tags, but what do those slogans actually mean to people, and how did they get here? I guess if you wholesale lift and shift some of Evangelion's most iconic iconography, you can take shortcuts to the deep and meaningfuls.
On a surface level, the visual/aural aesthetics here are beautiful. The train level in particular is a rollercoaster kaleidoscope of atmospheric colour and sound, but scratch at the surface of these skyboxes, and what's actually underneath them? Umurangi Generation doesn't seem all that interested in telling you. It doesn't care, and that's probably the whole point. An off-handed "ok boomer" tweet in video game form.
The game itself is... alright. Most of its flaws have been well-documented on Backloggd already, so I'll try to avoid repeating other people. The timer and objectives are tight little polygonal nooses around the player's neck that constrain what should be a game about the freedom of expressing. Sure, you can turn them off, but I'm generally opposed to disturbing the "default" configuration of a gameplay loop that has presumably been thought about and designed to be played as-is. You wouldn't start your first ever game of Doom by typing or 'iddqd' or 'idkfa' to get god mode and all the guns, would you? There's an unlockable free roam mode in here that feels like it should have swapped places with the main game - I don't think anyone's ever attempted photography as a form of time trial.
Movement is similarly restrictive and antithetical to the game's perceived purpose. The player moves slowly and awkwardly, which makes pixel-hunting for tiny scraps of photo feel like a huge chore - I couldn't help but make comparisons with last year's Paradise Killer, which seemed to revel in letting players Marvel vs Capcom their way across the landscape to hunt for little clues and ephemera. The rollerskates that the Macro DLC provides are a much-welcome but too-late addition, arriving at a point in the experience where the ceaseless tedium has already accumulated to a critical mass. The level layouts feel almost too big for the default walk-speed, but paradoxically too small for any kind of enjoyable rollerblading - I found myself hitching and twitching against geometry every half-minute or two, and the double jump very rarely does anything to help me navigate the environment except trigger clipping glitches that let you move around in the negative space behind the 3D world. I think I mostly used it to get on top of people in order to use them as stepping stones.
Speaking of the people - why are we never encouraged to photograph them? You can tell them to pose, sure, but why is the game more concerned about making you document 6 Pizza Box, 3 Toilet Roll, 9 Brick than recording the people who are living through what is presumed to be the end of time? It's a game that is ostensibly concerned with political struggle and material circumstance, but often ignores the social nature of existing in these kinda jankily-made spaces. BLM and ACAB and KILL FASCIST make for great spray tags, but what do those slogans actually mean to people, and how did they get here? I guess if you wholesale lift and shift some of Evangelion's most iconic iconography, you can take shortcuts to the deep and meaningfuls.
On a surface level, the visual/aural aesthetics here are beautiful. The train level in particular is a rollercoaster kaleidoscope of atmospheric colour and sound, but scratch at the surface of these skyboxes, and what's actually underneath them? Umurangi Generation doesn't seem all that interested in telling you. It doesn't care, and that's probably the whole point. An off-handed "ok boomer" tweet in video game form.
3 Comments
it's disheartening to see so many people just get nothing out of this game thematically - obviously, if nothing about the game really resonated that's completely fair! for me, I just think the game is a fabulously effective and deeply resonant exploration of knowing that the world is crumbling and dying around you, but being unable to do really do anything about, about what it means to try to make art and try to be creative and to live in the world just before the end. i didn't see Umurangi as a game about capitalism being bad - it takes that as read. i think if anything, the increasing prevalence of "i don't get why the cops are supposed to be bad???" takes demonstrates to me, at least, that the game isn't really concerned with spending time telling you shit that's obvious like Cops Are Bad. i think it's about how we respond to the knowledge that the world around us is ending and individually we are largely powerless to do anything about it.
i think it's interesting that you bring up Paradise Killer Athene because i think if there was a game that did feel like it was "parroting wokeisms", I think I'd personally say it's that over Umurangi? paradise killer is a tremendously effective exploration of how uncaring and self-serving the elite are but it didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. yes the cops are self-serving enforcers of the status quo. yes the lives of the poor are harvested for the elite. it communicates that fantastically, but with the subtlety of a brick to the face and kind of acted like a youtube video exploring a political viewpoint I was already massively aware of, at least in that aspect. Umurangi by contrast reflected parts of my thought process that no other game had so well, made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world, and put into words feelings I was never able to. and I guess I kinda bristle at that being described as "parroting wokeisms" (not in a sense of, you're wrong to think that just like...god damn that is mean)
i dunno. i'm sorry about this, I realise this is quite self-indulgent. it's just that the majority of reviews I've seen seen since the switch release conclude that the game has nothing really to say about anything beyond shallow nihilistic "capitalism bad" takes and that couldn't ring more false to my own experiences with the game that I felt I couldn't just leave it alone. i'm not writing this to say that you two or anyone else are wrong to think the way that you do, I just wanted to speak a few words on this game that touched me the way few others have and has been met with a resounding "whatever" from people I really thought would dig it.
i think it's interesting that you bring up Paradise Killer Athene because i think if there was a game that did feel like it was "parroting wokeisms", I think I'd personally say it's that over Umurangi? paradise killer is a tremendously effective exploration of how uncaring and self-serving the elite are but it didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know. yes the cops are self-serving enforcers of the status quo. yes the lives of the poor are harvested for the elite. it communicates that fantastically, but with the subtlety of a brick to the face and kind of acted like a youtube video exploring a political viewpoint I was already massively aware of, at least in that aspect. Umurangi by contrast reflected parts of my thought process that no other game had so well, made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world, and put into words feelings I was never able to. and I guess I kinda bristle at that being described as "parroting wokeisms" (not in a sense of, you're wrong to think that just like...god damn that is mean)
i dunno. i'm sorry about this, I realise this is quite self-indulgent. it's just that the majority of reviews I've seen seen since the switch release conclude that the game has nothing really to say about anything beyond shallow nihilistic "capitalism bad" takes and that couldn't ring more false to my own experiences with the game that I felt I couldn't just leave it alone. i'm not writing this to say that you two or anyone else are wrong to think the way that you do, I just wanted to speak a few words on this game that touched me the way few others have and has been met with a resounding "whatever" from people I really thought would dig it.
I wouldn't say the game parrots wokeisms - it just doesn't expand upon them as much as I would have liked. I feel like giving this game another year in the oven to gestate and respond to real-life events might have helped it. But I do respect a game that's brave enough to come out in the moment!
atheneallen
2 years ago
Great review.