NWR Interactive > Reader Reviews

Project "Backlog Eradication" - Clearin' out the pile o' shame

<< < (19/19)

Killer_Man_Jaro:
Limbo

I'd be the first to tell you that I'm not exactly the most artistically-minded person you're likely to meet. You show me a piece of minimalistic art and I can try to extrapolate some way to appreciate it, but while I have some respect for the 'less is more' philosophy, at a certain point you have to draw the line. So when I read all the uproarious praise Limbo received at its release, I sort of looked at the game with raised eyebrows. Catching up with it now thanks to the Humble Indie Bundle, my suspicions were confirmed: I just don't understand what all the fuss was about. It's a short and simple 2D puzzle game that, in my experience, lost more and more of its appeal as it progressed.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am commenting on the whole game, not just the presentation, as I think the minimalist approach extends to everything about Limbo's design. I will, however, briefly address this part of the game by saying that the silhouetted visual style and low-key audio create a decent atmosphere of bleakness and hostility early on, but this effect wore off quickly. To its credit, the game maintains this aesthetic right up to the end, although that might be the issue - without any contrast, it stopped having an impact on me before too long.

And I think that, ultimately, that typifies my opinion of Limbo. It creates a strong first impression, but the simplicity and sluggish pacing caused my interest to wane over time. Despite clocking in at no more than 2 hours from start to finish, it took me 4 sittings to complete Limbo, for at multiple points, the compulsion to keep going was not there. That's not to say that the puzzles are totally dull or repetitive - on the contrary, they work within the limitations of the nameless protagonist's abilities to stay pretty varied. It's just that the game is made to be played so deliberately, and whenever it asks more of your reflexes or demands greater precision, it stumbles, because the controls and general feel of how the character moves and jumps is not immediate enough to suit these purposes.

Let's be clear here. I do not hate Limbo. However, back in 2010, this was considered a Game of the Year contender by many outlets. To be perfectly honest, I don't see it.

Oblivion:
Can I steal this idea? I have a huge backlog and I need to get rid of it.

Killer_Man_Jaro:
Botanicula

What a wonderfully weird game. Machinarium was pretty kooky, but this latest point-and-click adventure from Amanita Design cranks the oddball factor up to eleven. In the two hours that I've logged with it, I have already experienced an veritable feast of craziness. You might think that I'm playing this up for effect - in all seriousness, from what I've seen so far, this is the reason to play Botanicula.

In terms of its virtues in the adventure game genre, it may actually be somewhat of a step down from Machinarium, at least as far as intricacy or logic of the puzzles go. A heavier emphasis is placed on simply clicking everything on each screen and watching the events unfold, until something happens that contributes to you moving forward, and all puzzles more or less amount to 'find __ number of __ in this area'. In some sense, this can be viewed as a benefit, as if like me, you have played many games of this ilk, you will enjoy the momentum with which Botanicula moves.

I won't beat around the bush. This game is really an excuse to string together a series of audiovisual treats. The folks at Amanita clearly know how to choose a theme and then run wild and have loads of fun with it. There are countless interactive elements that have no bearing on the progression, but exist just to show off amusing animations and bizarre sound effects that put a smile on my face almost every time. At one point, your characters - a troop of sentient flora - have their greatest wishes granted by a genie, and of the five selectable sequences, only one of them is pertinent to the story; the rest are there to let you see and hear strange things (in a game already chock full of strange sights and sounds).

Killer_Man_Jaro:
Pullblox

At last, the deed is done: I finally cleared all levels in Pullblox (or as it is known to many of you, Pushmo) this weekend. It was no small feat, and as I slowly parsed out the solutions to the last handful, I realised what a mistake it was to go on such a hiatus with it. Pullblox is the kind of puzzle game where you need to immerse yourself in its mechanics & logic and develop a vision for creating useful block formations if you are to make any sort of consistent progress on it. If you go too long without playing it, that vision will atrophy and you will have a hard time getting a feel for the puzzles until you build it back up.

Every time I took a somewhat extended break from the game, I would do a poor job on the first level I popped into, fumbling my way slowly up this structure of blocks and more often than not reaching a point where I had no idea how to climb any higher. I would stare for a few minutes and then either come across the solution by accident or swallow my pride and skip to the next stage. But in the next level, everything would begin to make sense again. I'd start to think several moves ahead, properly account for what jumps my character could make, prepare for situations where I might need to drop down, do something then climb back up. Suddenly, I was speeding through the levels, and when I later returned to the level I skipped, it was such a cinch, I couldn't understand how I'd gotten stuck before.

Pullblox is one of those masterful puzzlers that takes one simple concept and wrings it for all its worth. After getting to grips with the basic premise, it finds numerous different ways to apply it to differently shaped structures, then layers on top a couple of new mechanics to expand the possibilities for puzzles even further. I give it my highest recommendation - if your 3DS is hooked up to the internet, this is the first piece of software you should get.

P.S. I wanted to briefly talk about the user-generated content, which is distributed through QR codes. Now I used to be as much of a QR code cynic as the next person, but having at this point filled up all 5 pages of slots for custom levels, I must admit that there is something kind of magical about scanning a picture on my laptop and all of a sudden, there it is, in my game! In some strange way, scanning in levels is almost more fun and addictive than playing them - as a general rule, the user stages are not as well put together as the ones Intelligent Systems built and most of the time, they are difficult by virtue of being absolutely colossal structures. Personally, I just like collecting really well-constructed 8-bit and 16-bit sprites.

Killer_Man_Jaro:
Trauma Centre: New Blood

Status update: Reached chapter 3-4.

In lieu of Trauma Team, which will apparently never be released in Europe (you guys can complain about the 'Op Rainfall' trio, but at least you will eventually get them), I snapped up a copy of New Blood to keep my desire for virtual surgery in check. In certain respects, it makes noticeable advancements on its forebears, but I still sometimes get frustrated playing it, though not always for the same reasons.

If you are familiar with the Trauma Centre series, you will most likely find the opening chapter a very slow burn. After nearly an hour of the standard fare of excising tumours, removing glass fragments and manically suturing dozens of lacerations, I was feeling a little down on the game, as it seemed like it was all the same concepts being recycled again. I realise they need to teach the basics to new players, but I'd rather they were presented as a tutorial that I could skip, because that first act really dragged for me.


Thankfully, the game picked up significantly in the second chapter. Now, the operations not only have new ideas - I've installed a pacemaker, repaired a shattered ribcage and carried out skin grafts on severe burns - but they are generally more interesting and more challenging. It feels weird to say this, but playing Trauma Centre is stressful and yet I like that. Once you get past the tedium of the early operations, it puts across the tension of a surgical procedure impeccably. The best levels are the ones where you must move quickly & precisely and must be prepared to deal with sudden complications.

The operations haven't been particularly frustrating so far, but I'm sad to say that music notwithstanding, the sound design has been severely grating and I am slightly fearful that it will drive me insane before I reach the end. Voice acting has been added in New Blood, but whereas you'd think this will be a big presentational improvement, it's actually to the detriment of the game because the characters do. Not. Stop. Talking. For almost the entirety of each operation, they deliver a barrage of instructions. It is often things that I already know how to do, and because I'm regularly completing steps faster than they speak, their lines of dialogue are constantly being interrupted by new ones as they try to keep up with what I am doing. To add to that, nearly every action you carry out successfully is accompanied with a "ding" sound effect, so when you're doing a lot in rapid succession, this sound goes off again and again. This is stuff that I could really do without, and as I've started to enjoy the gameplay a great deal, I hope it doesn't get to me too badly.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page