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TalkBack / Re: This Week's Virtual Console and WiiWare
« on: February 11, 2009, 03:34:18 PM »
Well, I decided "what the hell" and went and downloaded LIT anyway, since the reviews seem to be averaging about a 7 or so and I could use a good puzzle game after the hack-and-slash wonderland that was the Kingdom Hearts game I just completed (the PS2 remake). Well, I'm on the 17th floor (of 30, not counting boss floors) I'd say the reviews have this game just about nailed: it's good, but it has a lot of problems. While most of the early puzzles are rather intuitive and you generally have a good idea how to start a room, it's pure trial-and-error to get beyond that. Often times what the game wants you to do is the exact opposite of what you'd think you should do, so you end up taking out windows or turning on lights in the wrong order. The game also has a wierd sense of logic when it comes to where you can and can't go when it comes to the darkened areas: most times, if you so much as step a foot off your safety path you instantly die. However, there are times (usually involving a placed flare) where the game will allow you to walk over darkness patches so long as they're small and you quickly run over them. Also, if there happens to be an item or lamp inside the darkness but near enough to trigger your context-sensitive icon, you can reach out and grab it with impunity. This is not true of doors, however. It can also be very hard to keep track of the path you're running on, especially if the path is towards the back of the room and away from the camera. You see, not only do you have just a small sliver of ground to run on most times, but the path isn't constant. Yeah, where you can step doesn't change, but the darkness occasionally oozes over the moonlight to obscure your view of the path. The sheer number of times I've died so far from accidentally running off a path when I was dead sure I was running a straight line...
Oh, and thanks developers for putting an explosive item in the game (the Cherry Bomb), and then designing levels so you have to be extremely exact where you throw it (9/10 so far away from a window that it's just barely in the blast radius) so you don't take out any nearby lights that you can't see in the dark. It also took me several levels to notice that your character faces whatever direction your Wiimote cursor happens to be pointing, a vital thing to know when it comes to setting flares properly that the game doesn't bother to explain (hell, there's not explanation of anything, including this "story" the game seems interested in). No, the write-up in the manual doesn't count, because it's not actually in the game.
Bosses are REALLY trial-and-error based, as the game gives you no indication how you're supposed to deal with them and very little time to study the situation to form a plan (I just dealt with these two demon doll sisters, and the way you dispose of them is very different from the previous 2 bosses). As soon as you start the process of taking down a boss, you pretty much have to keep moving through the motions until you've disposed of them...which is easier said than done.
Overall, it's a clever puzzle game with very good atmosphere and sound work, though the girlfriend on the phone's starting to get on my nerves with her cheesy acting. Still, there's good use of the Wiimote microphone for those one-way conversations ala No More Heroes. And finally gettin a puzzle right is suitably satisfying. So yeah, I'd say 7//10 on average is a fair assessment: it's an interesting experiment, but the actual product is very rough and needed polish (which oddly the developers themselves admitted to the IGN crew).
Oh, and thanks developers for putting an explosive item in the game (the Cherry Bomb), and then designing levels so you have to be extremely exact where you throw it (9/10 so far away from a window that it's just barely in the blast radius) so you don't take out any nearby lights that you can't see in the dark. It also took me several levels to notice that your character faces whatever direction your Wiimote cursor happens to be pointing, a vital thing to know when it comes to setting flares properly that the game doesn't bother to explain (hell, there's not explanation of anything, including this "story" the game seems interested in). No, the write-up in the manual doesn't count, because it's not actually in the game.
Bosses are REALLY trial-and-error based, as the game gives you no indication how you're supposed to deal with them and very little time to study the situation to form a plan (I just dealt with these two demon doll sisters, and the way you dispose of them is very different from the previous 2 bosses). As soon as you start the process of taking down a boss, you pretty much have to keep moving through the motions until you've disposed of them...which is easier said than done.
Overall, it's a clever puzzle game with very good atmosphere and sound work, though the girlfriend on the phone's starting to get on my nerves with her cheesy acting. Still, there's good use of the Wiimote microphone for those one-way conversations ala No More Heroes. And finally gettin a puzzle right is suitably satisfying. So yeah, I'd say 7//10 on average is a fair assessment: it's an interesting experiment, but the actual product is very rough and needed polish (which oddly the developers themselves admitted to the IGN crew).
And if you can spot the spin-off on your console but not the main series you're probably getting shovelware as well. Has any spin-off like that resulted in anything good?
