Audyssey

Please...a moment of silence.

A moment of silence for all the potential that was lost with this game...oh, the humanity.  Oh, what woeful whereabouts be the world we wander.

I'm going to describe this game to you all, and I absolutely guarantee that you are going to want to play it.  Audyssey is a puzzle-platformer in which you must traverse the levels by using your power to control sound.  That means you get to jump around, collect stuff, and interact with the environment.  The kicker is that every time you do any of those things, a unique sound is played.  That's right, we may have finally married the concepts of puzzle games, platformers and rhythm games in beautiful polygamist harmony.  If only the game didn't commit the mortal sin of all games.  It pains me to have to say this again, especially after I've already noted how old it was getting, but why in the name of all that is good would there be

NO

DAMN

SAVE

FEATURE!!??!!?!?!!?

The game pulls of narrative really well.  It's water-color slideshow opening reminds me of Braid in a very good way.  It moves you.  It makes you feel for the characters...gives you a purpose...only to have all your progress wiped the second you X out or the game crashes (which happens way more often than I'd like.

In addition, the music thing doesn't even work too well.  They tried to implement a concept similar to that of Bit.Trip Flux (which is a terrific game to any who haven't played), but the reason it worked in Bit.Trip Flux is because it could guarantee that an action you performed to initiate a sound effect would always happen at a specific time, thus forming one cohesive song.  In this game, however, the nature of platforming means that you could very well pick up a collectable or jump at the slightly wrong time and the entire song crumbles like a Jenga tower on a railroad track.

This game just makes me so angry!  The controls are floaty, so you're bound to slip off a platform to your death every now and again.  Gameplay this frustrating would be totally excusable if I was allowed to ragequit and come back to it later, but as I said before, there's NO GODDAMN SAVE FEATURE!

It's really a shame because I want very badly to see the resolution of this game.  Unfortunately, it's just not worth it.  The amount of frustration I'd have to bear and the time I'd have to waste to beat this game all in one go is just unreasonable.  This game had everything!  The graphics are nice, sound direction competent, controls passable, concept flooring...all it needed was this one teeny tiny thing and it would have been a fantastic game.  That's right, I said it.  Fantastic!  The gap between utter crap and fantastic is as simple as a save feature.

*sigh*  I'm done.  I can't deal with this game anymore.  I'm gonna go play some Attack of the 50ft Robot to cool down.  I like that game because the infinitely spawning enemies means infinitely spawning toys in my sandbox of horror, so take that, Luis!

Now that I've left you all wondering who this Luis character who may or may not be responsible for potentiallymeaningful.blogspot.com, I'll bid you adieu.

Links
a bigger disappointment than my physics grades: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24675