The gaming related ventilation thread!

[Arjahn]

Just beat Owlboy and am going to post a hearty rant below, use the bathroom and grab a snack now, because I'm externalizing my thoughts, bitch.


Starting with some positives, the game looks gorgeous, the sprite work is incredibly detailed and I mean just look at a few screenshots, it's a sight to behold. The second dungeon is honestly one of the best videogame levels that I've ever played through, it just keeps throwing new mechanics and characters at you and weaves them together in a fun way that's never overwhelming and always a blast to play. I was grinning like and idiot throughout the entire area and it might be worth the price of admission just for it. The writing is fantastic, when it's between characters you give two shits about. The villains are bland and the overall plot is really uninteresting, but when your party is going at it with eachother, it's truly fantastic stuff.  The relationship between Owlboy and his mentor is honestly one of the few times in my life that a videogame has really touched me on an emotional level, which is why it pains me to say...

Spoiler

THE DEVS FUCKED IT, THEY FUCKED IT SO HARD ITS GRANDKIDS ARE GONNA CHAFE.

Oh my god where to even begin with this hot mess, the most glaring flaw is that the holes in controls start to become really apparent after the third dungeon when the game introduces "Fast" enemies. The twin stick shooter feel is fine for slower enemies and a few bosses, but when mosquitoes that clip through walls and dash right at your face spawn in hives of 5 at a time approximately 4 times per room in the fourth dungeon, the sluggish shooting really starts to wear you down.

OH but before the second dungeon, you need to sneak around pirates! Yup, this is actually a stealth game! And it's not like it's a platformer with a few stealth segments, a LARGE portion of this game consists of sneaking around bad guys, I'd say it's about a 25/75 split between stealth and platforming, that's not misleading advertising at all.

Well with all of that stealth, the mechanics must be really robust and interesting, right? Nope, it's walking behind boxes. Yup, just walk behind boxes and wait for enemies to turn around. Oh and sometimes enemies can see behind them, but not always, but from time to time. Which brings me to my next point...

Consistency, this game has none, shit just happens and you have no control over it. A good example is that early on, you get a stone which allows you to teleport your allies to you, which is great and alleviates a lot of would-be  frustration. Well near the end of the game, the most useful member of your team has to crawl into a wedge to open a door for you and instead of just teleporting him back to you once he's done, you just leave him there. Just chill out in a wall dude, we probably won't need you, it's not like YOU'RE A FORMER MEMBER OF THESE PIRATES WHO HAS INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR SHIP OR ANYTHING.

This isn't a smart ass solution or plot hole I thought up either, teleporting your allies through closed gates is a major part of the game, the devs just forgot about the good thing they did I guess.

Let's see, what else. There are "puzzles" that consist of pulling a level or pushing a switch, never complicated in the slightest. There's a currency/experience system where you collect coins in order to receive nicer and nicer upgrades, which is fun at the start since it encourages exploration, but again it feels like the devs just straight up forgot about it and you receive the final upgrade (outside of 100%ing the game) around halfway through the damn thing. There are some areas where beating every enemy spawns a secret chest full of coins, but then certain areas reward you with jack shit for clearing them out, so unless you want to kill literally every enemy in the entire game, there's no point, and it's really discouraging.

The overall story is fucking awful honestly, and the final boss is truly one of the most poorly designed that I've ever faced. You need to shoot him with every ally you have, which is cool in theory, but when you shoot him it makes the same fucking sound that enemies deflecting your shots has throughout the entire  game. So if you happen to think of his weakness, which I did, the game's feedback is "no, nothat's not going to work." I had to look it up on YouTube because I didn't have any other ideas for fucks sake.

The last ally you make near the end of the game is insanely overpowered, since he lets you dash across the screen and gain 2 seconds of immunity frames when his dash takes 1 second to charge up, making you effectively invincible and making every subsequent boss fight a joke.

The area before the final boss takes away your flight, which is cool in theory, but then it requires a lot of insanely precise jumps and the input lag becomes more noticeable than ever. There was a point where I stumbled upon a sort of hidden balcony and I wasn't sure that I could make the jump, so I just didn't try for it since the game's checkpoints are super spotty and I didn't want to redo a bunch of painfully inconsistent platforming. In an exploration game, THAT SHOULD NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN

God this game is disappointing, never before have I played something that started so strong and fell so far. I actually cared about these characters, that never happens and the devs just murdered it, fuck man.