@dakur said:
@jg4xchamp said:
As in Guacamelee? Eww
That game while good on its own merits, is pretty disappointing.
Why dissapointing? I´m not disagreeing with you but want to know why you think that way. I really liked Guacamelee but something felt off that stopped from becoming a true classic for me although I´m not sure why.
Well for starters I went in pretty pumped for the concept, luchador metroidvania. I grew up on wrestling, I like the Rock, I like Metroid, sign me up. But then a lot of the humor in that game is shitty meme humor or like game jokes, and memes by their nature aren't actually funny in any other context. They work specifically as a pic or like an internet thing, not necessarily as a fun reference.
To me they had way more to work with on the actual aesthetic - Luchadoors, and wrestling jokes if anything. And instead I got a lot of "hey remember castle crashers?" And that stuff just makes me eye roll more than laugh, and I don't subscribe to games can't be funny. Portal exists, Saints Row 3 is a thing, the PS2's era of platformers: Jak, Ratchet, n company were funny. Time Splitters had well done jokes.
Mechanically speaking the games high light is the beat-em up part, which I have no problem with, it's actually damn good. Nice crunchy mechanics, fun bosses, and enough combos in there to keep me mostly satisfied by a 2d beat-em up. The Metroid part is less interesting, to me what's been lost over time is Super Metroid has become the "go get this item, and now you open this door" game. And that's sort of true, but Super Metroid was also about a design language, world design, atmosphere. A lot of that space, even for a 2d game feels organic, feels natural. You actually have multiple options to progress in specific areas, especially if you learn how to do the games wall jump.
In contrast a lot of games inspired by Super Metroid, are more rigid in that department, and become more arbitrary. So it's a lot of get this move to open blue doors, get this move to crush the yellow shit. It's less interesting, part of what I really loved about Ori and the Blind Forest is that they found neat ways to make the skill progression, not about a color coded door. It was more about elevation, reaching higher points to progress further into the forest. So as a result the forest still maintained a level of atmosphere, internal logic, and plausibility. Even in a 2d game that stuff would still help.
And in 3d, some of the best types of takes on that type of world design would be things like Dark Souls (how many color coded doors do you take down in Dark Souls 1?), or The Mansion in Resident Evil Remake (keys are important), or what Arkham Asylum was. Asylum might be the most direct Metroid, get thing, open new passage, but even then I felt like the writing team was on top of it and made buying into the gadget Batman got, and how it helps feel some what plausible. If anything there is a mid game thing when Poison Ivy's plant takes over the Asylum that feels like filler, but that says more about pacing and narrative structure, less about their spin on Metroid.
Which is where I was disappointed, because while the combat was fun, I thought the aesthetic actually under delivered, and the world design was kind of boring. I felt similar to the latest Strider, if anything, that game should have been more of a level by level game like OG Strider games were, and not the ghetto Metroid-like game it was. Because the Metroid part is actually the worst part about that game.
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