Playlist (October 2021) (Patreon)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the playlist. Here’s three short reviews of games I’ve been checking out lately. You can watch it as a video, above. Or read it as an article, below.

Metroid Dread

Metroid Dread is, of course, the latest game in the Metroid franchise. This one is a side-scrolling 2D platformer, akin to games like Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. And it’s made by Mercury Steam, the developers behind Samus Returns on the 3DS and a bunch of Castlevania games.

Which, yes, makes them the only true Metroidvania developer. Deal with it, baby.

So, I think the first thing you’ll notice about Dread is just how well it controls. Samus always felt a bit floaty and weird in the early games, but in the GBA titles she suddenly got these incredibly tight, well-tuned controls. And it extends to this game. Couple that with a badass slide move and a powerful counter attack and, boy, it feels amazing to move around this world.

Combat, in general, feels good - and the boss designs are excellent, I feel. I’ve never been a big fan of bosses in 2D Metroid games: they often feel like big bullet sponges. But, here, you need to learn patterns, dodge attacks, switch up tactics, and counter incoming swipes. They’re very hard, but I enjoyed all of them.

I was less into the E.M.M.I robots. Basically, in most of the game’s biomes there’s a chunk of the world that’s being patrolled by an unstoppable robot sentry. So, you’ll have to switch to stealth, or frantic escape, to stay alive. It’s a continuation of the Space Pirates at the end of Zero Mission and the SA-X throughout Fusion.

Personally I found them a bit tedious - they often slowed the pace of the game to a crawl, as you’re expected to hide in a hole or walk slowly while donning a camouflage suit. But I soon realised I could just brute force these sections by running like crazy. And sometimes I’d die, but that only sent me back to the start of the E.M.M.I zone. So it was easier to just run and die a few times than slowly, stealthily, move through each zone.

Now I’ve done a whole video about the game’s world design, so I’ll wrap that up quickly by saying the game has a bunch of tricks and techniques to guide you through the world and help you avoid getting lost. They’re clever, but applied quite aggressively and for me - someone who loves the navigation and exploration aspects of Metroid games - that spoiled the fun on many occasions.

But what it does lead to is a game with incredible pacing. You’re constantly finding new abilities, reaching new areas, fighting new bosses. It’s so hard to put the game down because there’s always something more! It’s quite a ride.

So, there’s a lot going on here - some stuff I love, some stuff I’m disappointed with. In general, I really enjoyed my time with the game, but it’s not going to become a firm favourite of the series, for me.

Ynglet

You ever play a game where you really enjoy the gameplay - but some other aspect of the presentation just really puts you off? That's what happened to me with Ynglet, the new game from the creator of Knytt.

So it's this strange new take on the platformer, where the world is a collection of floating blobs that you can swim around in - and between those blobs there's gravity pulling you down into the bottomless abyss below.

So, you have to get some speed up and leap out of one blob and try to land in another. Later you get a dash, there are trampolines to bounce off of, there are little trainlines that take you around.

And it feels great! It's like some mix of Ecco the Dolphin and Celeste, and it leads to some really inventive and original platforming thrills. I really dig it!

Buuuut, I just really don't like the art style. It's got this hand-drawn effect, so it looks like pen on paper and it's not appealing to me. And worse still is the music and sound effects which, I don't know why, but they make me feel anxious and uneasy. This is very possibly a "it's just you, Mark" problem - but hey, that's my experience.

There's also one gameplay thing I don't really like. So, there are no checkpoints in the level - but you can make one, anywhere, by standing still in a blob for a couple seconds. And, like, it's just short enough that you might as well do it all the the time before a tricky platforming section - and just long enough that it's tedious to do it. And so I mostly didn't do it and ended up losing lots of progress and kicking myself for having no patience.

Not a wonderful gameplay experience! But hey, do consider checking it out. The core gameplay is a lot of fun.

Pode

Pode is a co-op puzzle game, where two players control quite different little characters. One is a tiny round sun, who can germinate flowers, float in mid air, and walk on water. The other is a chunky rock, who can make crystals appear, push down buttons, and carry stuff in his mouth.

So, enter a bunch of simple but satisfying little conundrums about working together to overcome obstacles. It's not the hardest puzzle game in the world, but it's just tricky enough to get two players communicating and collaborating to solve things.

Throughout the game, Pode is constantly adding new mechanics to play with. Sometimes in the level itself, like giant flowers, waterfalls, and pitch black darkness that can only be illuminated by the sun character. And other times in the characters - and that's where things can get a bit tricky.

Especially with the sun, who gets a teleport action that is pretty fiddly to use. It doesn't lead to harder puzzles - on the whole - but just more complex controls to figure out.

There are also a few puzzles that are just not well designed. At the end of each area there's a final conundrum that takes a break from the usual style, and changes to something more akin to a riddle. And these can be fun to figure out, or they can be frustrating, incoherent, or annoying to enter the answer. One almost sapped away the game's goodwill because it took a good 10 minutes just to wiggle the physics system into playing ball. Gah!

But overall this is a sweet, attractive, and enjoyable puzzle game that will provide some light entertainment for a couple or some friends. Not the most effusive praise, I realise. But that's where I'm at!

Thanks, see you next month!