nincompoop said:
Come on, there isn't a SINGLE European here who wants to try out an awesome-looking pure 2D platformer-Metroid hybrid? It would be nice to hear some impressions before it comes out in the US :/ Well, here's some footage of the first 10 minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtb-gqly8fc
Well, I've played it for a few hours now, and reached the second "world". The first world is segmented into six stages, but they are connected in various ways, and you can teleport between them so you can go back and get things you couldn't reach before. I like it, but I also hate it with a furious passion. To get the bad things away first:
- You walk very, very slowly. And when you control the little robots inside the main robot, they control infuriatingly, insultingly slowly. It shouldn't take ten or fifteen seconds to walk across the screen. I REALLY hope I'll unlock a speed booster soon. I expect to.
- You can only shoot straight ahead. Lots of games do that, but:
- Remember the eagles in Ninja Warrior for the NES? Were they irritating? Yes? Well, Robox has the fly, and the fly in Robox is the single most infuriating flying enemy ever. It swoops in on you in random ways that are very hard to predict, and since you have only three hit-points (at least early in the game), one fly can easily kill you. Over and over and over again. Then there are the places where you have to jump on tiny branches while dodging flies. You'll fall down a lot. And there's the miniboss-fight where you face 20-30 flies. And they take three shots to kill.
- Some places have forced scrolling. They are an ok change of pace, but they are also way too long. The first also involves lots of enemies that fall down on you, and since you move slooowly, you can barely escape them. At least until several start to fall at once, so you have to find the opening between them and hope you can plod there in time. Which you can only do if you have reached that far before, seen the opening, and gotten killed because you couldn't reach the safe spot in time.
- Did I mention falling enemies? In the boss-fight, I had to restart several times because an enemy randomly fell directly on top of me right out of the sky, and I had no chance to dodge it. The boss is hard, so you need all those three hit-points, and suddenly appearing, non-dodgeable enemies are not acceptable in that situation.
- Leaps of faith. You actually have to make leaps of faith. Sometimes to move on, other times to get treasure ("amber", which gives you another tiny robot to fix your insides with). Many of the stages have many vertical passages, and you cannot look up or down, so you just have to jump and hope you land somewhere.
- Hazards that blend into the background. This is mostly a problem in the first world. There are red, prickly bushes that damage you. Problem is, there's a lot of vegetation around, and it can be difficult to spot those red bushes before it's too late. I've run into them time and time again.
Well, that was a lot of bad things. I hope I become quicker and get more firepower soon, so I can at least kill those flies with one shot. The game is full of sloppy design that only makes it irritating. I'm a patient player, but I was pretty close to losing my cool with this, and I've only played through the first world! But at the same time, it's fun and interesting, and challenging in a kind of old-school way you don't see much nowadays. The urge to try just one more time is very strong. It reminds me a lot of old 16-bit games, actually. It does not remind me of the Metroid-games, though. Not at all, except for the "get stronger as you go" aspect, which is in most games anyway.