I kind of skipped a lot of the cut-scenes, so I'm not entirely sure what the premise of the game is other than: there's a bunch of kids, there's some sort of magical lizard/newt, the kids can be summoned into a fantasy land where they appears as embodiments (lords?) of nature - there's a rock, vegetation, water, and air incarnation, they defeat bad guys in this land before heading back to the normal world.
I completed the first world - a forest area that was on fire! (because bad guys) and the game, while pretty simple (I'm not the target audience here!) works and has some interesting gameplay. It's all Playstation-era low poly characters and environments, but it's pretty well done for the small screens and such. Basically you always control a group of three characters - when more than one at a time, they just move around following the stylus (it's sort of a 3rd person overhead/isometric game). When you control them one at a time they can move around and do their own thing - eg. stand on a button, swim across an area,etc. So, this game is basically a typical/simple collaborative game - but you control all the characters.
Like I said, it works! The longer you play, the more convoluted and intricate the puzzles (nothing super hard), and the next world (waterworld!) adds a new variation in gameplay with some sidescrolling areas too.
So, there's variety, there's also combat (and you have a few different swipe/tap moves and combos to do). It was fun enough... but definitely not the sort of game I'm super interested in continuing to play.
BUT
I am curious - it's a Konami game and the characters/setting all scream "this was a tv show with toys and stuff". But, I think this game might be a sort of reverse tie in? As in, make the game and hope there's enough success for a tv show to follow? Also, I have a european copy of the game and the back of the case does not have a barcode. Rather, there's a message that says "Not to be sold separately" - so perhaps there are/were toys or some other thing to go with this game? I'm curious...
This is weird. I was sure I had written about this game before!
As I wrote the last entry I remembered things I though I had written about? Or maybe I just told someone?
ANYWAYS, here goes (again?).
There's a janitor who speaks in a very distinctive accent. I recognized it as Finnish and I got a real kick out of that. The game's by Remedy - a Finnish company - so it's not really a surprise...but still, a cultural detail I appreciated. Also, this guy says the weirdest things that I'm SURE are literal translations of Finnish sayings. And they come across as super eccentric and weird. But, it added a neat touch of humor. Like the whole point of the saying is lost in the translation and it just sounds weird. So, for example in Chile people will call something "marca chancho" which translates literally as "pig brand". The phrase is used to refer to a product being some generic brand with no quality. Not necesarilly fake or off-brand, but just like a brand that has no value or meaning. Almost throway. But if I said in english, "oh, that television is pig brand" people would think it was weird. So, the janitor guy is like that.
Oh, the game's ending felt a bit of a let down - you figure out what happened to the agency's director (which is what kicks off the game in a way), then you kind of rescue your brother (oh, he's in a coma) which was the whole motivation - but then the aftergame is doing more missions to clean up the agency. It seemed like a bit of a let down?
Like I said, I didn't play it - though there was a cool mission that's quite meta - your sort of stuck inside your own mindtrap/hallucination you need to break out of - and it kind of involves not doing what the game tells you to do. Sort of.
Oops. I should have written about this one before because...well, I've been playing it for about a month and there's lots going on.
I guess at this point I should start with the "bad". I decided to move on from the game (while being pretty close to the end, as I later verified by watching a video playthrough) mostly because I tipped over into the frustration side of things in different combat scenarios. There are attacks that kill you quite quickly and it's a bit of a pain to restart (which happens "automatically"), make your way back to were you were and (sometimes, not always) have to replay a bunch of stuff before getting killed again. Sigh.
I guess there's other "bad" things as well - I never really got the hang of navigating the different game spaces and the map was useful, mostly. So, hard to get to exact locations - but good for figuring out which zone I had to be in.
Overall the interface is pretty slick - and there's so many "lore" items to find and read and so on that the game's premise and setting is really cool and interesting.
Part of the reason for it being hard to move around (find my way) is that there are lots of dead ends/wasted space. Here the wasted is only in the videogame context. For example, there are lots of restrooms around - which are placed in places that make sense for an office building - but there was never anything interesting gameplay wise in them. They just take up space - and make the overall videogame navigation harder to do.
The game really lathers up the "what is going on?". The entire time. I don't know what's going on (not even after the game ends, tbh) and that's by design - it's supposed to be a weird interdimensional creepy scary mystery...and it's quite effective!
BUT, I did start to tire of the combat - and while the powers felt cool and fun to use I often died because I had pressed the button to bring up the shield, it didn't come up, and then I got hit and died. I'm sure that's my fault - but the timing on the buttons felt a bit off at times, I often died from stuff I felt I couldn't see (the 3rd person camera didn't help here), and it's likely I was trying to use to powers at once and didn't have enough energy?
But, the powers are cool. They're doled out slowly and interesting ways - like, I could swear I got one of them from doing a side mission? Which sounds bizarre...but still?
OH! There's an mission that was super cool - even if I had to redo it numerous times and almost bailed from the game here - you go into a weird self-changing maze BUT you're wearing a Finnish janitor's walkman and it's blasting this rock song - so, high intensity cool action. When you finish it your character goes "that was awesome!", and it was. Even if I felt more relief than elation just because of how many times I had to redo a section...
This one's pretty fun - though my lack of understanding of Japanese writing means that I wasn't able too make too much progress. Basically you have to guide a ball along a path - which you create by sliding tiles (like those sliding tile puzzles). The ball moves automatically on the path and you can tap it so it zips faster. If it gets to a "dead end" it just turns around and starts rolling back along the path. I really like this part, to be honest, because it means you're juggling stuff without the impending doom that other similar games have (ie. you get to a dead end and you lose).
That doesn't mean the game lacks challenge though! You have to roll the ball along and pick up other little balls (that also roll around) - IN THE RIGHT ORDER - and then roll the whole lot into the "endzone" tile. At first it's easy because you just need two hearts (the balls have little symbols on them), and it's not that hard. But, if you get the order wrong or don't meet the minimum you lose a life and have to try again.
That's where I got to the point where I had to stop because I couldn't figure out what the goal was and in which order. I don't think it's the order the balls appear, and at times it seemed like the interface was saying one thing - but then I did not do that and still cleared the level?
Anyways...I had to stop playing because I'm too lazy to figure out the goals and after spending 10 minutes online I haven't found a "translation" that helped.
Oh, another feature that makes the game feel less mean and more friendly (but still challenging) is that if you've picked up the balls in the wrong order or something - you can slide a panel as the lot is going from one tile to another and "slice" them so that they split up! I discovered this by accident!
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Aug 15th, 2024 at 22:48:31.
