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Games Backloggd


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Lunacid
Lunacid

Dec 18

Hi-Fi Rush
Hi-Fi Rush

Jan 28

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This is a very, very straight homage to Gameboy-era Zelda. If that's what you're looking for it absolutely is that. But it just didn't give me anything that felt like it would hold my attention. Abandoned at the first boss I thought had an overtuned health bar.

I liked a lot of what I saw in the brief time I played this game but the game is built around combat that's just... not particularly good. It very much feels like talented designers given not enough time to make a game in a genre that's new to them; lots of creative ideas, not a lot of polish and some significant missteps The traversal feels wonky and flowless, the combat feels ill-suited to the level design, the mission structure is baroque and unclear.

It's a shame, because Rocksteady's writing and lens into this setting is as sharp as it's ever been, to the point of making the Suicide Squad feel engaging and entertaining as characters.

There's just nothing here that feels novel or unique or interesting. Every idea and every mechanic is just an industry standard taken from better games, there's no twist or hook anywhere to be found, there's no unique selling points, there's no... soul? It's very odd to see this sort of powder-coated approach to game design in a metroidvania, a genre that normally doesn't get this industrial treatment.

As an example of how this game seems very polished but lacks individually attentive craft: There's a super bar in this game, because of course there is. If you do one of the counter attacks with a long animation, it will increase exactly as it's supposed to: a little increase on all the smaller hits in the animation, then a big increase on the final big hit. The industry standard rules of gamefeel have been applied here.

And yet it feels supremely unrewarding to fill that bar; there's no juice. And the UI design is actively confusing about whether you have a full bar or not, and about when exactly you can spend that resource (especially in the heat of middle-of-the-road combat). This went through all of the quality control procedures but nobody took a lapping stone to it, if that metaphor makes sense.