Whooo-ee, git along, lil' doggy!
I was amused by how little the developers of this little gem seemed to know about what a stereotypical Texan looks like, because for a guy whose name translates to "King of Texas," the titular character looks less like a cowboy and more like "Rico Rodriguez Jr." It's weird, because the icon for this game is a guy in a 10-gallon hat assembled about as crudely as one would expect his moral and intellectual spirits to be (just kidding, Texas. I love you <3).
anyhow, my relative impression of Rex Texas, if drawn on a graph, would sort of resemble a beautiful Texas mountainside. For all who would rather I do the visualizing for them, that looks a bit like this:
/|
/ |
/ |
/ |
/ |
____/ |
Boy howdy, I hate making half-assed ASCII art. The things I do for my nigh-nonexistent audience...
Now, let's break that graph down a bit, shall we? Let's start with the ground-level line at the beginning. first impressions of Rex Texas were a bit shaky. This may have been because the combination of amoxicillin and clavulanic acid in my system has basically reduced my digestive system to a porridge palatable only to those troll-things from The Hobbit, but I was nauseous within the first 5 minutes of play because the developers put way too much stake in the "world" part of the word "overworld" and designed the damn thing as a sphere that shifts along with you, making me feel almost seasick. Not only that, but dying was way too easy. In addition, I was not a fan of this game's "read a barely intelligible sign and hope for the best" method of conveyance which left me confused and completely out of flow.
I started climbing the metaphorical mountain when I entered my first cave and got my first powerup, the double jump. Suddenly, traversing the map was more fun than it was in Just Cause 2. There are few better feelings that the DigiPen Game Gallery has made me feel than the one I get from watching Riccito hookshot onto a mountain and then do a little tumble-roll up onto a cliff. My immersion only increased as I explored the cave more and found more powerups that made exploring the overworld even more enjoyable and rewarding. It was honestly some of the most fun I've had in a very long time, and I've replayed more than a few of my favorite games this summer. It wasn't long before I found myself adding little games to the game, such as "hey, let's see if I can clear this cave without having Riccito touch the ground once" I couldn't help but notice, however, that the one thing this game lacked was direction.
Sure, you can occasionally stumble onto a map that points to a particular place on the map and says "you should totally check this place out," but even Just Cause 2 was able to justify your crazy mass murdering and exploration somehow. In this game, there's just kinda nothing. "This won't be a problem," I thought, "as long as the game lets me continue from where I left off after I exit." After all, this game is basically designed to be a toybox to distract you from your miserable life for a few wonderful moments before you go back to filling in timesheets, and being able to pick it up and put it down is essential to a game like that. Otherwise, it would make as much sense as an action figures that vaporizes once you stop playing with it.
And, since you already saw the graph, I'm pretty sure you all know where I'm going with this. I really hate it when developers forget that people might not want to sit through your game in one go. It doesn't matter how fun your game is, people aren't always going to have 3 hours free to get through your whole fiasco. That's why I was never a fan of the early NES games, but even with those, you could just pause the game and turn off your TV, but a computer is a device that gets absent-mindedly turned off and on all the time. Yeah, that's not my most compelling argument, but still. Learn how to make your game save a player's progress, dammit!
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay a-grapplin'
Links
Text Lexus: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1408
Monday, August 5, 2013
Return to the Sky
This game surprised me right off the bat by having something I don't think any other game on this list did: an expository voiceover! While chilled by the professionalism displayed in this introduction, I was not terribly interested in which part of the sky I'm returning to nor why I want to return there in the first place. The title established my mission and that was enough for me, so I dove right in.
Now, a returning reader may know that I'm not a fan of pixel art in modern games. I find it to be pretentious and unnecessary. However, the pixelated art style in Return to the Sky commits none of the sins I normally associate with pixel art while also being pretty damn breathtaking, especially the big, omnipotent skull of purple smoke chasing you around everywhere. I like the kind of art that calls back to the old days, but is beautiful enough in its complexity that it never could have existed back then. The art style herein is distinct, awe-inspiring, and nostalgic without any of those particular flavors becoming overbearing, so, in short, A+.
Many people disagree with me on this, but I feel that the way a game looks is not quite as important as how it sounds, and while the sound direction in Return to the Sky isn't quite as fantastic as its visual design, it certainly gets the job done. Your ears won't be crying for relief, but they won't be calling for more, either. What the sound direction does is set the mood, which is the most important thing it can do. Even if you didn't see the game, you would feel like you were trapped in the darkest part of Aladdin.
But I don't think anyone would deny that how a game feels is the most important aesthetic sense of all, and with a few minor tweaks here and there, Return to the Sky could feel downright amazing. It already flows beautifully with its thoughtfully placed platforms that force you to learn the mechanics through the mechanics alone (a reading from the first book of Egoraptor), but there's a bit of a delay between your pressing the jump button and your character actually jumping. Your character is athletic enough to linger in the air so that this isn't much of a problem, but jumping at the very end of a platform is a habit you will have to unlearn for this game.
In my Resonance review, I said I like games that challenge my mind as well as my reflexes, and I wasn't necessarily talking about philosophically-charged niche games like Deus Ex. This game is a more colloquial example of what I'm talking about. I don't need enough mind food to go ahead and white a dissertation on the nature of man; all I want is to be able to nod my head and go "oh yeah. That was the right thing to do, and I know exactly why," which is a feeling this game conveys to me beautifully. This one gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay skybound.
Links
Wheee: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26721
Now, a returning reader may know that I'm not a fan of pixel art in modern games. I find it to be pretentious and unnecessary. However, the pixelated art style in Return to the Sky commits none of the sins I normally associate with pixel art while also being pretty damn breathtaking, especially the big, omnipotent skull of purple smoke chasing you around everywhere. I like the kind of art that calls back to the old days, but is beautiful enough in its complexity that it never could have existed back then. The art style herein is distinct, awe-inspiring, and nostalgic without any of those particular flavors becoming overbearing, so, in short, A+.
Many people disagree with me on this, but I feel that the way a game looks is not quite as important as how it sounds, and while the sound direction in Return to the Sky isn't quite as fantastic as its visual design, it certainly gets the job done. Your ears won't be crying for relief, but they won't be calling for more, either. What the sound direction does is set the mood, which is the most important thing it can do. Even if you didn't see the game, you would feel like you were trapped in the darkest part of Aladdin.
But I don't think anyone would deny that how a game feels is the most important aesthetic sense of all, and with a few minor tweaks here and there, Return to the Sky could feel downright amazing. It already flows beautifully with its thoughtfully placed platforms that force you to learn the mechanics through the mechanics alone (a reading from the first book of Egoraptor), but there's a bit of a delay between your pressing the jump button and your character actually jumping. Your character is athletic enough to linger in the air so that this isn't much of a problem, but jumping at the very end of a platform is a habit you will have to unlearn for this game.
In my Resonance review, I said I like games that challenge my mind as well as my reflexes, and I wasn't necessarily talking about philosophically-charged niche games like Deus Ex. This game is a more colloquial example of what I'm talking about. I don't need enough mind food to go ahead and white a dissertation on the nature of man; all I want is to be able to nod my head and go "oh yeah. That was the right thing to do, and I know exactly why," which is a feeling this game conveys to me beautifully. This one gets my seal of approval.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay skybound.
Links
Wheee: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26721
Return of the Fallen Lords
Due to my abnormally unforgiving schedule recently, I was not able to keep up with my schedule, as you may have noticed. I was rather religiously adhering to a "2 reviews every other day" policy. In the name of shirking trends, I have vowed to get back on schedule today, no matter how crappy these antibiotics are making me feel. I've estimated that to take about 4 reviews, so these next four are going to gradually decline in quality, kind of like my intestines at the moment.
Return of the Fallen Lords is an arcade shooter wherein you defend a tower and/or yourself from the minions of Thanatos, whose job descriptions are basically "be a jerkface." You move with the WASD keys and shoot hammers in any of 8 directions with the arrow keys.
Especially in Hammerthon mode, the enemy placement seems to be bullet-hell inspired, which seems like it should make for buckets of fun, given the octodirectional projectile you're equipped with. Note, however, that in any decent bullet-hell game, you can move as you shoot. In RotFL, you get locked in place whenever you attack. This is a rather detrimental design choice because it reduces the gameplay to a very formulaic "line your character up with the enemy, tank a few hits inevitably, kill one enemy, rinse and repeat." Since it's infinitely more difficult to determine the path of an unbending diagonal line than it is that of a straight horizontal or vertical line, you're pretty much only going to use 4 of the 8 directions, which makes the game smell of missed potential somewhat.
Other than that, Tower mode feels like a contrived add-on rather than an integral part of the game, which is weird because Tower mode is what is automatically selected when you start the game. You're not given enough indication as to when more tower pieces become available for you to pick up, and the tower has so much health that it's basically equivalent to a baited tree stand and the enemies are deer. As all of us Animal Planet viewers know, that's illegal because it takes all the challenge out of hunting, so why would you work a mechanic like that into the main part of your game?
So yeah, stick to Hammerthon mode, but even there the air is thick with contrivance. Why does the rock elemental seem to wreck the enemies' shops way more than the other elementals that are just as plentiful, for example?
This game does demonstrate a great aesthetic sense with a 3D design that not many games on this list can match, although this game did come out this year, so the technology was in its favor. Even past that, though, there are some cute details that were able to elicit a smile from even jaded ol' me. My favorite is that when you mouse over the "quit" button, your character does an overly dramatic pratfall flat on his back, so at least the last thing I saw before I walked away was charming.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay fallin'
Links
grrr smash raar: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26714
Return of the Fallen Lords is an arcade shooter wherein you defend a tower and/or yourself from the minions of Thanatos, whose job descriptions are basically "be a jerkface." You move with the WASD keys and shoot hammers in any of 8 directions with the arrow keys.
Especially in Hammerthon mode, the enemy placement seems to be bullet-hell inspired, which seems like it should make for buckets of fun, given the octodirectional projectile you're equipped with. Note, however, that in any decent bullet-hell game, you can move as you shoot. In RotFL, you get locked in place whenever you attack. This is a rather detrimental design choice because it reduces the gameplay to a very formulaic "line your character up with the enemy, tank a few hits inevitably, kill one enemy, rinse and repeat." Since it's infinitely more difficult to determine the path of an unbending diagonal line than it is that of a straight horizontal or vertical line, you're pretty much only going to use 4 of the 8 directions, which makes the game smell of missed potential somewhat.
Other than that, Tower mode feels like a contrived add-on rather than an integral part of the game, which is weird because Tower mode is what is automatically selected when you start the game. You're not given enough indication as to when more tower pieces become available for you to pick up, and the tower has so much health that it's basically equivalent to a baited tree stand and the enemies are deer. As all of us Animal Planet viewers know, that's illegal because it takes all the challenge out of hunting, so why would you work a mechanic like that into the main part of your game?
So yeah, stick to Hammerthon mode, but even there the air is thick with contrivance. Why does the rock elemental seem to wreck the enemies' shops way more than the other elementals that are just as plentiful, for example?
This game does demonstrate a great aesthetic sense with a 3D design that not many games on this list can match, although this game did come out this year, so the technology was in its favor. Even past that, though, there are some cute details that were able to elicit a smile from even jaded ol' me. My favorite is that when you mouse over the "quit" button, your character does an overly dramatic pratfall flat on his back, so at least the last thing I saw before I walked away was charming.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay fallin'
Links
grrr smash raar: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26714
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Resonance
Genre-melding is an easy way to justify slapping the word "unique" onto your advertisements. So many beat'em ups and rhythm games have been made that it's difficult to add anything new to either of those genres, much like there have been so many ways to prepare chicken and milkshakes separately over the years that easiest way to make your own unique milkshake would be to throw bits of chicken into it, if you catch my drift. Now, ask yourself, does that sound like a milkshake you would want to drink?...er...eat....maybe...eh...
Actually, I have a tough time classifying Resonance as a beat'em up, because even though the game has you punch and blast your way through hoards of enemies that could not have more blatantly ripped off the heartless from Kingdom Hearts (another beat'em up game thinly disguised as a different genre), the way you do that is by playing very quick games of Guitar Hero, so that ends up becoming the extent of what the game is to you: a series of 3-second guitar riffs that you try to play in time. Needless to say, it can get quite repetitive quite fast.
The game tries to spice things up by throwing in some enemies that keep their distance while others swarm you, meaning you'll have to adjust your attacks every now and again to adapt to the kind of enemies you face, but doing so in any meaningful capacity just causes such sensory overload that it becomes frustrating. Luckily, you have enough health to tank a few hits while you figure out the best plan of attack, if you so choose, but that was a pretty sloppy way to remedy the problem because since you have so much health, taking hits is almost unnoticeable, reducing the game even further to just a succession of Guitar Hero riffs.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of genre-melding, because the juxtaposition of two types of gameplay allow for an easier and more effective analysis of each mechanic, and that's not just from the critic's standpoint. Even the average player can see which elements work and which don't much clearer through the lens of that glorious juxtaposition. However, just throwing two diverse things into a blender doesn't mean the end product is going to be any good. I had fun with Resonance, but not because of how its mechanics play off each other. I had fun with it because of the beautiful game feel. Hitting enemies is rewarding due to the high amount of damage displayed by stringing together combos, everything is nice and colorful, etc.
I'll admit that I was a bit too harsh on this game. It's good, seriously, it is. It's just not the kind of good that I like, if that makes any sense. I like games that make me think, games that make me feel, games that challenge both my mind and my reflexes. I value depth more than I value sensory stimulation, and this game favors the latter over the former. Does that make it bad? Absolutely not. It just isn't going to rank too highly on any of my personal Top # lists.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay rockin'
Links
Let's Go, Soul Resonance! Huwaaaah!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1637
Actually, I have a tough time classifying Resonance as a beat'em up, because even though the game has you punch and blast your way through hoards of enemies that could not have more blatantly ripped off the heartless from Kingdom Hearts (another beat'em up game thinly disguised as a different genre), the way you do that is by playing very quick games of Guitar Hero, so that ends up becoming the extent of what the game is to you: a series of 3-second guitar riffs that you try to play in time. Needless to say, it can get quite repetitive quite fast.
The game tries to spice things up by throwing in some enemies that keep their distance while others swarm you, meaning you'll have to adjust your attacks every now and again to adapt to the kind of enemies you face, but doing so in any meaningful capacity just causes such sensory overload that it becomes frustrating. Luckily, you have enough health to tank a few hits while you figure out the best plan of attack, if you so choose, but that was a pretty sloppy way to remedy the problem because since you have so much health, taking hits is almost unnoticeable, reducing the game even further to just a succession of Guitar Hero riffs.
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of genre-melding, because the juxtaposition of two types of gameplay allow for an easier and more effective analysis of each mechanic, and that's not just from the critic's standpoint. Even the average player can see which elements work and which don't much clearer through the lens of that glorious juxtaposition. However, just throwing two diverse things into a blender doesn't mean the end product is going to be any good. I had fun with Resonance, but not because of how its mechanics play off each other. I had fun with it because of the beautiful game feel. Hitting enemies is rewarding due to the high amount of damage displayed by stringing together combos, everything is nice and colorful, etc.
I'll admit that I was a bit too harsh on this game. It's good, seriously, it is. It's just not the kind of good that I like, if that makes any sense. I like games that make me think, games that make me feel, games that challenge both my mind and my reflexes. I value depth more than I value sensory stimulation, and this game favors the latter over the former. Does that make it bad? Absolutely not. It just isn't going to rank too highly on any of my personal Top # lists.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay rockin'
Links
Let's Go, Soul Resonance! Huwaaaah!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1637
ReLevelEd
Level design is one of those things that the layman tends not to appreciate, isn't it? I mean, when you play a platformer, for instance, you're usually not thinking about how thoughtfully the medley of blocks that you're jumping on were placed because you're too busy trying to jump on the blocks. Level design is a tenet of game design that should really be more appreciated, and games like ReLevelEd are just the way to make that happen.
ReLevelEd is the kind of game I like to call a "reverse platformer." That's a platform game wherein you do not control the character, rather you control the platforms. See also, Penguin Panic (sort of). It's a decent concept, but it can be really frustrating when done poorly, see also every tower defense game ever made. Whether or not the character dies is what determines whether or not you win, so not being able to keep the character from suiciding can be incredibly frustrating. That's why escort quests are so hated among gamers today. In order for a reverse platformer to be successful, therefore, you have to be able to manipulate the pace of the character in some way, otherwise it feels less like you're playing the game and more like the game is playing you, if you catch my drift.
ReLevelEd pulls that off rather well. If the character is about to fall into some spikes, you can trap it by surrounding it with blocks, leaving you to go to work without fear of the character forgetting that pointy things are not good things to cannonball into. The only problem is that if even a little bit of the character makes it across one block, placing a block in their path won't have any effect, leaving the character to just ghost through the halting block and into a spike pit.
I think where ReLevelEd fails most is in 2 areas: conveyance and iteration time. I'd been playing for far too long before I realized how to delete blocks, meaning if I accidentally placed a block in the wrong place, I'd just have to watch as the character flies into a depth charge. Similarly, at one point I thought the game was simply broken because I couldn't get the character to clear a jump that was a bit too long. Then I realized that you could change the intensity of the effect a certain block has by using the mousewheel. I only learned that by playing the tutorial, so if that weren't there, I'd have ragequit way earlier than I did.
the real reason I quit was because of the iteration time. This is a game where you will die a lot...rather, the little red man who thinks spike balls are comfy will die a lot. There are checkpoints, but they aren't nearly close enough together. Sometimes, you will have to clear 3 separate distinguishable areas before you get to the next checkpoint. This kind of design would be fine if the game were about reflexes rather than problem solving, but if I already demonstrated that I know which blocks go where, having to demonstrate that again is just frustrating. And when people get frustrated, they make careless errors, for which there is no room in ReLevelEd.
Now, as frustrating as this game is, as I said earlier, it does make the player gain a bit of appreciation for level design, especially when they go into the level editor and try to create their own levels, quickly realizing how much skill it takes to design levels that are even functional, much less as gargantuan and varied as the ones this game's developers made.
All in all, this game is definitely appreciable, but not all too fun. It's the same feeling one gets from watching one of those preposterously complex and artsy movies like Memento. You can see how much skill, thought, and effort went into the production of the project, but so much flies over your head and keeping up with it is so exhausting that you just want to give up, turn off your brain, and play Saint's Row. In fact, Imma go do that.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay safe.
Links
StUpiDly stYlIzeD: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=481
ReLevelEd is the kind of game I like to call a "reverse platformer." That's a platform game wherein you do not control the character, rather you control the platforms. See also, Penguin Panic (sort of). It's a decent concept, but it can be really frustrating when done poorly, see also every tower defense game ever made. Whether or not the character dies is what determines whether or not you win, so not being able to keep the character from suiciding can be incredibly frustrating. That's why escort quests are so hated among gamers today. In order for a reverse platformer to be successful, therefore, you have to be able to manipulate the pace of the character in some way, otherwise it feels less like you're playing the game and more like the game is playing you, if you catch my drift.
ReLevelEd pulls that off rather well. If the character is about to fall into some spikes, you can trap it by surrounding it with blocks, leaving you to go to work without fear of the character forgetting that pointy things are not good things to cannonball into. The only problem is that if even a little bit of the character makes it across one block, placing a block in their path won't have any effect, leaving the character to just ghost through the halting block and into a spike pit.
I think where ReLevelEd fails most is in 2 areas: conveyance and iteration time. I'd been playing for far too long before I realized how to delete blocks, meaning if I accidentally placed a block in the wrong place, I'd just have to watch as the character flies into a depth charge. Similarly, at one point I thought the game was simply broken because I couldn't get the character to clear a jump that was a bit too long. Then I realized that you could change the intensity of the effect a certain block has by using the mousewheel. I only learned that by playing the tutorial, so if that weren't there, I'd have ragequit way earlier than I did.
the real reason I quit was because of the iteration time. This is a game where you will die a lot...rather, the little red man who thinks spike balls are comfy will die a lot. There are checkpoints, but they aren't nearly close enough together. Sometimes, you will have to clear 3 separate distinguishable areas before you get to the next checkpoint. This kind of design would be fine if the game were about reflexes rather than problem solving, but if I already demonstrated that I know which blocks go where, having to demonstrate that again is just frustrating. And when people get frustrated, they make careless errors, for which there is no room in ReLevelEd.
Now, as frustrating as this game is, as I said earlier, it does make the player gain a bit of appreciation for level design, especially when they go into the level editor and try to create their own levels, quickly realizing how much skill it takes to design levels that are even functional, much less as gargantuan and varied as the ones this game's developers made.
All in all, this game is definitely appreciable, but not all too fun. It's the same feeling one gets from watching one of those preposterously complex and artsy movies like Memento. You can see how much skill, thought, and effort went into the production of the project, but so much flies over your head and keeping up with it is so exhausting that you just want to give up, turn off your brain, and play Saint's Row. In fact, Imma go do that.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay safe.
Links
StUpiDly stYlIzeD: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=481
Thursday, August 1, 2013
preemptive apology
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
Thanks for understanding
-Dean
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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