Feb 12, 2012 at 4:15 PM
Join Date: Feb 12, 2012
Location:
Posts: 11
Ok, first I want to open by saying that even though I'm going to be very critical of certain elements of the game I found it was overall enjoyable.
Guide Dang It:
I will start by saying that the game shouldn't require me to use a gameplay guide in order to get the 'good' ending. In the game there are a couple points on which you are given no information on how choosing an option will influence the rest of the game unless you're following a guide. For example when you have the option to change in your Pistol for the Machine gun, there is no indication that there's other options and if you choose it you're kept from getting one of the best weapons in the game. This really shouldn't be happening without at least some indication that there's other upgrades. How hard would it be to put in some sort of warning along the lines of "Note: Taking this upgrade will prevent you from getting other pistol upgrades later in the game". This also isn't the only case of this occuring, this occurs to a rather annoying frequency. When you first see Booster in the Labyrinth there is no real indication that taking the pack then will prevent it's use in the future. As far as you know the game might be pulling a fast one and might be hiding a powerup from you if you don't get it then and there. He's wounded and near dead, so for all you know at the time he would die and take whatever he had on him with him. So effectively you're screwed over for exploring and being curious which isn't a good thing in a game based partily around exploring for power-ups. It doesn't help that this also radically changes how the story plays out also without warning making it all the more frustrating. It also for some bizarre reason causes a power-up for rescuing your partner to not appear for no reason. Because of this you miss out on the 'good' ending simply because you talked to an NPC without any prior warning unless you were using a strategy guide. It gets worse when dealing with Curly. Even if you followed all of the other steps, if you don't go into that room, sleep in the bed, read the computer monitor, read the bookshelf, read the computer monitor again, talk to Curly, then talk to her again and choose to take her with you, she will die. This is not good design at all unless it was intended to frustrate the player or otherwise make them rely on a guide which isn't something to be proud of.
Call a human a 'Robot':
This was a rather annoying bit of the game. You're called a robot despite having no features that actually define a robot. You're basically a pale human that went into a Coma for about ten years in a cave and developed plot convenient amnesia, that's what I saw myself as anyway. When told I was a robot in game I just facepalmed at how absurd it was. The Under water meter for example works like an oxygen meter despite you being a 'robot' the game attempts to justify this by saying you're not water proof which doesn't exactly make sense with how the 'breathe' meter handles in game. Other issues with this include the fact that you're pretty obviously dressed like a human, sleep like a human, having human emotions, lack obvious robotic qualities, etc. and most importantly NOT ACTING LIKE THE REST OF THE ROBOTS IN THE GAME. This was a VERY immersion breaking part of the game. It uses 'Robot' even though it doesn't really apply in any sense of the word. It doesn't attempt to justify it by saying 'Android' or other 'Near-human' or otherwise highly human-like robot. Just 'Robot' but you and your partner are totally different from all the other robots in the game, even those that were sent with you at the unseen prologue. Your health expansions are refered to 'Life Containers' with a heart in it. It's not an 'Energy Container' or an 'Armor Upgrade' or anything of the sort, it's straight up ported from Zelda but with a slightly different name and sprite. The 'Energy' Power-ups are ambiguous and go to the weapons and not the character. Health pickups are hearts because robots clearly have organs. Heck, at several points in the game the 'robots' get healed with medicine which is absurd. In effect I played the game having an orange but everyone tells me it's an apple. I peel off the skin and show them the orange and they still refer to it as an apple. I show them an apple and an orange side by side, and they still call it an apple. It totally blew the immersion of the game out of the water for me and it never returned. Quite simply, if you're trying to sell them off as a robot then make sure they act like a robot, don't just have people refer to you or someone else as a robot.
Anti-Frustration Features:
Or the lack of them. Quite frankly the game is terrible in this respect. The game only has 3 save slots on a computer despite there being no real reason not to other than to give it more of a retro feel along with all the flaws it has. You also can only save in the same slot and not a different one so if you made a mistake like in my 'Guide Dang It' section then good luck starting the game over! There's also many segments where you're given a save point but not health or ammo, so if you get by with just the skin of your teeth and have no missiles and nearly no health it's quite easy to get into a cycle of dying over and over. You might say "Well just grind mods until you have the power-ups you need!" and I will respond by saying that's a cynical attempt to pad out the gameplay by adding a totally unnecessary grinding mechanic because the game wanted to appear difficult and retro. There's also other annoyances like that you're not given a frustration reducing check-point before each boss. While I know that it adds to the difficulty it's very frustrating to have to replay a section of the game over and over because you screwed up several minutes down the line. It's called flow and this breaks it rather notably if you're in the habit of dying a lot. Which you will if you're playing on hard difficulty! So better get used to taking it from the top. There's also this one delightful area before the 'Final' boss in which there's a save room but no health, the health is instead thrown to the top of the map in which you must scale every single bloody time you die to the final boss in order to heal up. WHY? Why was this included instead of a refill site? They both give the same effect only one is faster and more convenient and the other is missable and a bloody time sink. Which leads me to...
The 'Final' Boss Rush:
Ok, this part was very frustrating in which you're expected to fight 3 bosses (and two minibosses) in a row! What the hell?! No health or anything between each fight? Now obviously this must not apply to 'Easy' right? Wrong. Even on 'Easy' Mode you're still expected to fight all of them without getting additional health or 'ammo'. This is rather absurd and frustrating thing to ask of the player. 2 bosses, then one big boss with two boss strength mooks to deal with. No health, no ammo, no nothing. Now you might go "But wait you can talk to Chaco for health!" and we go back to 'Guide Dang It!' How exactly am I supposed to know that I can heal then and there? Further more, why should it be hidden as is frustrating the player or trying to make it look more challenging than it is somehow a point in it's favor? Just No.
Controls:
I gotta ask, but why can't the mouse have actions bound to it? It makes it very clunky to play on the keyboard where often I would get killed or otherwise put in a bad situation simply because there wasn't a good map of how to control your character. Being able to aim with the mouse and fire with M1 would have removed a good deal of frustration that came from the combat. Bonus points if the scroll wheel changed weapons and the right mouse could be bound to whatever you wanted. Those few features would have made the combat feel less clunky and flow better than it does on just the keyboard. But no this option wasn't available which is frustrating. Now, when I ask for mouse compatibility I don't mean the ability to aim in every direction, but instead aim at the closest of the 4 directions and fire at that angle. It doesn't help that the base bindings get me pressing weapon switch when I want to move or pressing the totally wrong key for jumping. I know those are rebindable but really, understand the kinds of games people probably play and note the general muscle memory pattern.
To quote the angry video game nerd:
"What bothers me about this game is just one simple problem: They swapped the buttons! B is Jump and A throws shells! How did they fuck up the controls for a Mario game?! Why change what we grew up with? Why change what's been firmly planted in our brains since childhood?!"
~on Mario Clash
So please, when you make the sequel or a similar game to it please don't repeat these mistakes over again.
Guide Dang It:
I will start by saying that the game shouldn't require me to use a gameplay guide in order to get the 'good' ending. In the game there are a couple points on which you are given no information on how choosing an option will influence the rest of the game unless you're following a guide. For example when you have the option to change in your Pistol for the Machine gun, there is no indication that there's other options and if you choose it you're kept from getting one of the best weapons in the game. This really shouldn't be happening without at least some indication that there's other upgrades. How hard would it be to put in some sort of warning along the lines of "Note: Taking this upgrade will prevent you from getting other pistol upgrades later in the game". This also isn't the only case of this occuring, this occurs to a rather annoying frequency. When you first see Booster in the Labyrinth there is no real indication that taking the pack then will prevent it's use in the future. As far as you know the game might be pulling a fast one and might be hiding a powerup from you if you don't get it then and there. He's wounded and near dead, so for all you know at the time he would die and take whatever he had on him with him. So effectively you're screwed over for exploring and being curious which isn't a good thing in a game based partily around exploring for power-ups. It doesn't help that this also radically changes how the story plays out also without warning making it all the more frustrating. It also for some bizarre reason causes a power-up for rescuing your partner to not appear for no reason. Because of this you miss out on the 'good' ending simply because you talked to an NPC without any prior warning unless you were using a strategy guide. It gets worse when dealing with Curly. Even if you followed all of the other steps, if you don't go into that room, sleep in the bed, read the computer monitor, read the bookshelf, read the computer monitor again, talk to Curly, then talk to her again and choose to take her with you, she will die. This is not good design at all unless it was intended to frustrate the player or otherwise make them rely on a guide which isn't something to be proud of.
Call a human a 'Robot':
This was a rather annoying bit of the game. You're called a robot despite having no features that actually define a robot. You're basically a pale human that went into a Coma for about ten years in a cave and developed plot convenient amnesia, that's what I saw myself as anyway. When told I was a robot in game I just facepalmed at how absurd it was. The Under water meter for example works like an oxygen meter despite you being a 'robot' the game attempts to justify this by saying you're not water proof which doesn't exactly make sense with how the 'breathe' meter handles in game. Other issues with this include the fact that you're pretty obviously dressed like a human, sleep like a human, having human emotions, lack obvious robotic qualities, etc. and most importantly NOT ACTING LIKE THE REST OF THE ROBOTS IN THE GAME. This was a VERY immersion breaking part of the game. It uses 'Robot' even though it doesn't really apply in any sense of the word. It doesn't attempt to justify it by saying 'Android' or other 'Near-human' or otherwise highly human-like robot. Just 'Robot' but you and your partner are totally different from all the other robots in the game, even those that were sent with you at the unseen prologue. Your health expansions are refered to 'Life Containers' with a heart in it. It's not an 'Energy Container' or an 'Armor Upgrade' or anything of the sort, it's straight up ported from Zelda but with a slightly different name and sprite. The 'Energy' Power-ups are ambiguous and go to the weapons and not the character. Health pickups are hearts because robots clearly have organs. Heck, at several points in the game the 'robots' get healed with medicine which is absurd. In effect I played the game having an orange but everyone tells me it's an apple. I peel off the skin and show them the orange and they still refer to it as an apple. I show them an apple and an orange side by side, and they still call it an apple. It totally blew the immersion of the game out of the water for me and it never returned. Quite simply, if you're trying to sell them off as a robot then make sure they act like a robot, don't just have people refer to you or someone else as a robot.
Anti-Frustration Features:
Or the lack of them. Quite frankly the game is terrible in this respect. The game only has 3 save slots on a computer despite there being no real reason not to other than to give it more of a retro feel along with all the flaws it has. You also can only save in the same slot and not a different one so if you made a mistake like in my 'Guide Dang It' section then good luck starting the game over! There's also many segments where you're given a save point but not health or ammo, so if you get by with just the skin of your teeth and have no missiles and nearly no health it's quite easy to get into a cycle of dying over and over. You might say "Well just grind mods until you have the power-ups you need!" and I will respond by saying that's a cynical attempt to pad out the gameplay by adding a totally unnecessary grinding mechanic because the game wanted to appear difficult and retro. There's also other annoyances like that you're not given a frustration reducing check-point before each boss. While I know that it adds to the difficulty it's very frustrating to have to replay a section of the game over and over because you screwed up several minutes down the line. It's called flow and this breaks it rather notably if you're in the habit of dying a lot. Which you will if you're playing on hard difficulty! So better get used to taking it from the top. There's also this one delightful area before the 'Final' boss in which there's a save room but no health, the health is instead thrown to the top of the map in which you must scale every single bloody time you die to the final boss in order to heal up. WHY? Why was this included instead of a refill site? They both give the same effect only one is faster and more convenient and the other is missable and a bloody time sink. Which leads me to...
The 'Final' Boss Rush:
Ok, this part was very frustrating in which you're expected to fight 3 bosses (and two minibosses) in a row! What the hell?! No health or anything between each fight? Now obviously this must not apply to 'Easy' right? Wrong. Even on 'Easy' Mode you're still expected to fight all of them without getting additional health or 'ammo'. This is rather absurd and frustrating thing to ask of the player. 2 bosses, then one big boss with two boss strength mooks to deal with. No health, no ammo, no nothing. Now you might go "But wait you can talk to Chaco for health!" and we go back to 'Guide Dang It!' How exactly am I supposed to know that I can heal then and there? Further more, why should it be hidden as is frustrating the player or trying to make it look more challenging than it is somehow a point in it's favor? Just No.
Controls:
I gotta ask, but why can't the mouse have actions bound to it? It makes it very clunky to play on the keyboard where often I would get killed or otherwise put in a bad situation simply because there wasn't a good map of how to control your character. Being able to aim with the mouse and fire with M1 would have removed a good deal of frustration that came from the combat. Bonus points if the scroll wheel changed weapons and the right mouse could be bound to whatever you wanted. Those few features would have made the combat feel less clunky and flow better than it does on just the keyboard. But no this option wasn't available which is frustrating. Now, when I ask for mouse compatibility I don't mean the ability to aim in every direction, but instead aim at the closest of the 4 directions and fire at that angle. It doesn't help that the base bindings get me pressing weapon switch when I want to move or pressing the totally wrong key for jumping. I know those are rebindable but really, understand the kinds of games people probably play and note the general muscle memory pattern.
To quote the angry video game nerd:
"What bothers me about this game is just one simple problem: They swapped the buttons! B is Jump and A throws shells! How did they fuck up the controls for a Mario game?! Why change what we grew up with? Why change what's been firmly planted in our brains since childhood?!"
~on Mario Clash
So please, when you make the sequel or a similar game to it please don't repeat these mistakes over again.