Short Version: This game is a tragedy. Everything I see in it yells excellence, but the moment I actually start playing, I hate it. The mechanics and the controls are completely at odds with the exploration you are encouraged to do, leaving me frustrated, angry and worst of all, bored. It gets more a lot more interesting later on, but it’s not worth the agony of dying a hundred times in the same area just to figure out the basics. Unless you are the kind of person that gets some sort of validation or sense of superiority by beating incredibly hard games, stay away.
Long Version: Not everything is as it seems at face value. At first I thought this would be a Limbo-style platformer with a simple story to follow. In reality, it was everything except that. Instead, it is a brutally hard survival game that tells you to explore, but also does everything possible to stop you from doing that. It’s frustrating, because everything other than the gameplay is incredibly beautiful and full of soul. The music, graphics and even the character animations are all outstanding, but I can’t enjoy it when I’m dying in the same spot for hours on end.
I Will Survive
Basically, Rain World is a story of a slug cat that gets separated from its family and has to find ways to survive in very harsh environments. One of the harshest things to find is the rain itself, which pours down in an almost apocalyptic fashion. No matter what, you’ll die from it, so you’ll need to hide in a special room and hibernate before your time is up. Of course, this means you’ll have to explore, hunt for food and watch out for predators. Other than that, there really is no explicit goal to reach other than to stay alive and fill out the map.
This already creates a problem where I didn’t really want to wander off too far away from my shelter, but I needed to do the opposite to progress. Plus, there’s no way for me to know what constitutes as a shelter and what doesn’t, let alone trying to find one at all before my time runs out. There’s always a ton of tunnels and alternate routes to go through, so it’s easy to get lost and not make it back before the rain kills you. What make matters worse are the frustrating controls that either inhibit or pad out your progress.
Slug+Cat=Prey
Basically, moving around in Rain World is like trying to escape a pool of quicksand. Despite how much the game encourages you to explore, the movement doesn’t allow you to do this comfortably. Your little slug cat character moves very slowly, has an incredibly short jump and is more vulnerable than a marshmallow in front of a fire. I’m not saying that games are bad if they are not power fantasies, but they really set it up so you can’t really catch a break at any time before the next thing comes to kill you.
It also doesn’t help that the aforementioned jump is so bad that any kind of platforming segment will be met with multiple tries and unintentional falls. Even though the backgrounds are gorgeous, it’s very difficult for you to tell what’s in the foreground. There were many times where I thought I could grab on to something, but it was actually in the background, leading me to fall and have to slowly climb my way back again; that is if a monster doesn’t kill me first.
[I originally posted this review on The Buttonsmashers. You can read the rest of the review
by clicking here or just listening to the video version above.]
Game Review – Rain World
0Short Version: This game is a tragedy. Everything I see in it yells excellence, but the moment I actually start playing, I hate it. The mechanics and the controls are completely at odds with the exploration you are encouraged to do, leaving me frustrated, angry and worst of all, bored. It gets more a lot more interesting later on, but it’s not worth the agony of dying a hundred times in the same area just to figure out the basics. Unless you are the kind of person that gets some sort of validation or sense of superiority by beating incredibly hard games, stay away.
Long Version: Not everything is as it seems at face value. At first I thought this would be a Limbo-style platformer with a simple story to follow. In reality, it was everything except that. Instead, it is a brutally hard survival game that tells you to explore, but also does everything possible to stop you from doing that. It’s frustrating, because everything other than the gameplay is incredibly beautiful and full of soul. The music, graphics and even the character animations are all outstanding, but I can’t enjoy it when I’m dying in the same spot for hours on end.
I Will Survive
Basically, Rain World is a story of a slug cat that gets separated from its family and has to find ways to survive in very harsh environments. One of the harshest things to find is the rain itself, which pours down in an almost apocalyptic fashion. No matter what, you’ll die from it, so you’ll need to hide in a special room and hibernate before your time is up. Of course, this means you’ll have to explore, hunt for food and watch out for predators. Other than that, there really is no explicit goal to reach other than to stay alive and fill out the map.
This already creates a problem where I didn’t really want to wander off too far away from my shelter, but I needed to do the opposite to progress. Plus, there’s no way for me to know what constitutes as a shelter and what doesn’t, let alone trying to find one at all before my time runs out. There’s always a ton of tunnels and alternate routes to go through, so it’s easy to get lost and not make it back before the rain kills you. What make matters worse are the frustrating controls that either inhibit or pad out your progress.
Slug+Cat=Prey
Basically, moving around in Rain World is like trying to escape a pool of quicksand. Despite how much the game encourages you to explore, the movement doesn’t allow you to do this comfortably. Your little slug cat character moves very slowly, has an incredibly short jump and is more vulnerable than a marshmallow in front of a fire. I’m not saying that games are bad if they are not power fantasies, but they really set it up so you can’t really catch a break at any time before the next thing comes to kill you.
It also doesn’t help that the aforementioned jump is so bad that any kind of platforming segment will be met with multiple tries and unintentional falls. Even though the backgrounds are gorgeous, it’s very difficult for you to tell what’s in the foreground. There were many times where I thought I could grab on to something, but it was actually in the background, leading me to fall and have to slowly climb my way back again; that is if a monster doesn’t kill me first.
[I originally posted this review on The Buttonsmashers. You can read the rest of the review by clicking here or just listening to the video version above.]Game Review – Toukiden 2
Game Review – The Silver Case