whoo-ee, it's 10:44PM as I begin writing this. This has to be a new record for me. It might not sound that impressive, but I am not a night time worker. Early to bed, as late as possible to rise; that's my motto.
Anyhow, Pentaflux is another platformer whose big hook is its weapon-unlock system. Every now again, you'll come across a little station that lets you upgrade your weapons and unlock new ones. The game this reminds me most of is Bulletstorm, but in a 2D platformer.
The game almost gets a little bullet-hellish at times. Aesthetically speaking, this game couldn't be trying harder to be Contra. Just look at the first level. It's practically a carbon-copy. I am thankful that they didn't decide to go the route of most games that call back to the "good old days" and use outdated pixel art, but the MS Paint aesthetic doesn't do much for me either. Nothing to scoff at, I suppose.
The biggest problem by far is that the weapons are terribly balanced. You wanna know how to win in this game? Pick any weapon with the word "homing" in it. Congrats, you win. To be fair, I fiddled around with most of the other weapons and found them to be fun and, mostly, relatively effective, but why would you bother learning how to use other weapons when you can have homing missiles do all the work for you?
Ah well, that's forgivable, I guess, because even if the homing weapons were the only ones offered, I would still have had fun moving down baddies. I can't quite recommend this game, though, because it kinda broke on me at the end of level 2. The screen scrolled too far for me to be able to see the boss. That and the design elements in general just reflect a lack of polish. Once again, we have a game with good roots and mediocre execution.
Alrighty then, let's talk about Perplexed.
Yeah, I'll tell you who were certainly perplexed: this game's marketing department. The game is advertised as a "relaxing puzzle game to relieve stress." Now, let's play word association. I say a word, you say the first word that comes to your mind. Ready?
Perplexed.
now, what words came to mind: confused? Flustered? Frustrated? How about relaxed? I'd be willing to guess that word isn't exactly on your top 10.
Of course I'm just nitpicking for the sake of comedy, but then I opened up the game and was practically assaulted by the menu screen's unbearably bright and highly contrasting colors.
Alright, I'll stop beating around the bush. Perplexed really is a simple puzzle game that's fun and has potential to be relaxing. Keyword: potential.
This game would have been relaxing for me were it not for 2 things:
First, there is no music. Some people may find this calming, but for me, it's just unnerving.
Second, rotating the blocks along certain axes is a little confusing. Though fiddling around with the camera fixes this, fiddling around with the camera is not relaxing. It's aggravating.
Oh well. Both of these games do what they set out to do. Both of them showed competent steps toward meeting their goals; and both of them lack the kind of polish that would make them truly good games. In the case of Perplexed, there are really simple issues like the "esc" key closing out the entire game. I'm sorry, but that kind of stuff is just lazy.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay shiny
Links
Pint of Lucks: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=431
Confuzzled: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=396
