No review tomorrow, guys. Sorry. I'm going to be out all day. Don't worry, though. I did the math, and as long as I produce an average 1.26314426576 reviews a day from now until the year's end, I'll meet my deadline.
Thanks for understanding
-Dean
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Redivivus
The video game is a good medium for an impersonal character. Sure, you can have a wonderful game that focuses on the development of a character, and you can even use the gameplay to develop the character; Oniro proves that, but lacking emphasis on characterization or plot of any kind means you get to focus more on the mechanics of a game. You can't get much more impersonal than the sphere from Leshy, but the creators of Redivius certainly tried. They did this by taking the sphere from Leshy and making it a bit more transparent, along with the world in which it rolls.
Anyway, Redivivus is a platform-racer of sorts wherein you roll around a semi-transparent and ever-flowing road to a finish line. By manipulating the momentum physics and the roads made out of silk that exist only partially, you strive to traverse the level as quickly as you can.
There's a certain bad tendency some games fall into where they establish a mechanic and then design a billion lackluster levels in which to explore that mechanic, leaving the game to feel mediocre and unnecessarily long-winded as a result. Redivius doesn't do that. There are only 4 levels and they're all very short. Of course, the risk one takes with that approach is that the game can very easily feel anemic if there are no more than 20 minutes of fun to be had, so the game needs to do either or both of two things when it's this short: 1) it needs to be designed beautifully, allowing for a full exploration of the mechanics or 2) it needs to have tons of replay value.
Redivivus has both of those qualities. The levels are wonderfully designed, forcing you to master all of the game's mechanics without relying too heavily upon one or leaving any behind, and the brutal but obtainable achievements for showing your mastery make sure you won't be truly done playing until you want to be...which probably won't be for a very long time. The levels ripple beneath you in a kind of psychedelic way, but it all feels natural in some way. Imagine rolling around on a semi-inflated bouncy castle made of Jell-o.
So in case you haven't caught on yet, I like Redivius. I like it a lot. It suffers from some of the same problems that other games featuring balls as their main characters suffer from, namely that friction is a bitch and your jumps are a bit tough to gague. There's also one portion of one level that simply does not fit in with the game's mechanics very well. The whole game you're plowing through the levels, making speed your priority, and then suddenly the game demands that you slow down and time your jumps like in those extraordinarily annoying moving platform segments in Sonic the Hedgehog.
One final note: the other two notable "sphere games" in the gallery that I've played so far (AEscher and Leshy) both forewent a traditional tutorial in favor of some floating text telling you what to do, which isn't a perfect method of conveyance, but it gets the job done in an unobtrusive way. Redivius has a tutorial level, but it seems kind of pointless because the floating text appears in the main levels anyway. Oh well, the tutorial level is just as fun as the other levels anyway, so I'm not complaining. That would be like saying a bunny hill undermines the value of the rest of a ski mountain's black diamond tracks.
All in all, Redivivus is a very fun and extraordinarily well designed game that actually earns the much-misused term "fast-paced." That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay translucent
Links
Like Rolling a Marble in Honey: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18597
Anyway, Redivivus is a platform-racer of sorts wherein you roll around a semi-transparent and ever-flowing road to a finish line. By manipulating the momentum physics and the roads made out of silk that exist only partially, you strive to traverse the level as quickly as you can.
There's a certain bad tendency some games fall into where they establish a mechanic and then design a billion lackluster levels in which to explore that mechanic, leaving the game to feel mediocre and unnecessarily long-winded as a result. Redivius doesn't do that. There are only 4 levels and they're all very short. Of course, the risk one takes with that approach is that the game can very easily feel anemic if there are no more than 20 minutes of fun to be had, so the game needs to do either or both of two things when it's this short: 1) it needs to be designed beautifully, allowing for a full exploration of the mechanics or 2) it needs to have tons of replay value.
Redivivus has both of those qualities. The levels are wonderfully designed, forcing you to master all of the game's mechanics without relying too heavily upon one or leaving any behind, and the brutal but obtainable achievements for showing your mastery make sure you won't be truly done playing until you want to be...which probably won't be for a very long time. The levels ripple beneath you in a kind of psychedelic way, but it all feels natural in some way. Imagine rolling around on a semi-inflated bouncy castle made of Jell-o.
So in case you haven't caught on yet, I like Redivius. I like it a lot. It suffers from some of the same problems that other games featuring balls as their main characters suffer from, namely that friction is a bitch and your jumps are a bit tough to gague. There's also one portion of one level that simply does not fit in with the game's mechanics very well. The whole game you're plowing through the levels, making speed your priority, and then suddenly the game demands that you slow down and time your jumps like in those extraordinarily annoying moving platform segments in Sonic the Hedgehog.
One final note: the other two notable "sphere games" in the gallery that I've played so far (AEscher and Leshy) both forewent a traditional tutorial in favor of some floating text telling you what to do, which isn't a perfect method of conveyance, but it gets the job done in an unobtrusive way. Redivius has a tutorial level, but it seems kind of pointless because the floating text appears in the main levels anyway. Oh well, the tutorial level is just as fun as the other levels anyway, so I'm not complaining. That would be like saying a bunny hill undermines the value of the rest of a ski mountain's black diamond tracks.
All in all, Redivivus is a very fun and extraordinarily well designed game that actually earns the much-misused term "fast-paced." That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay translucent
Links
Like Rolling a Marble in Honey: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18597
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