Some thoughts about… Aztech Forgotten Gods (Patreon)

Aztech feels like a lost Dreamcast game, but I mean that in a nice way. It’s not a technological masterpiece, but it’s weird and different. I respect that. The character models are low res, textures are muddy, there’s a lot of pop-in and the game stutters moving around town, your character’s hair clips through her face if you pick one of the hairstyles, you can see through the back of her head if she opens her mouth too wide, you move really poorly and jittery so that makes it feel like the frame rate is off...

But you have a giant gauntlet. That is also a rocket! And those two things are basically the premise for a Sega game. Those two things are a good premise for many potential video games. Just stick that on the box: Features giant glove that’s a rocket! It feels a bit like Gravity Rush. You can fly around, but it’s intentionally not refined. You feel like you’re more doing controlled flailing and blasting than flight.

The other big appeal is that the game is a different culture/mythos from the standard ones used in games. The story takes place in an Aztec-esq society that grew into a Wakanda-style technological wonder. So many terms I had to look up while playing, but it’s good learning new stuff. And Mesopotamian gods are just cool to begin with and then you make them giant semi-robots and that is just boss. The 2D art is really nice too, so the theming and style are what the game has down.

Buuut, playing it… It’s kind of set up like a boss rush game (which I am very into), but there’s so much downtime between fights. The hub world city looks neat, but it’s really tedious going to all the required story spots and climbing up to the shops or hunting down icons for side quests on your terrible minimap. The intro is sooo slow. And then Chapter 1 is slow. And Chapter 2… There is SO much dialogue that feels like filler or re-states something a character recently said and the game forces you to go to specific places on the map to have a conversation. Even though your character routinely talks to people over a communicator, you have to keep returning to the landmarks to advance the story. And every bit of dialogue is presented one line at a time, even if the same character has multiple lines. It’s just button mashing to scroll through them one by one so it makes the drawn out writing feel even worse.

Despite ALL that dialogue, the game is still pretty terrible at explaining gameplay things. You unlock new abilities as part of the story and it pops up a message saying you unlocked the ability, but then doesn’t tell what button you need to press to use it. It wasn’t until the boss was already knocking me around did the game remember to tell me how to use my new shield, which wasn’t activating when I pressed the right button earlier, so I don’t know what was up with that. It gives you mission markers before you can even access them because you don’t have the required ability yet or worse, you can enter the mission but you don’t have the powers/upgrades needed to clear it in time so you keep failing it. Your first Pursuit mission you’ll probably fail before you even realize the mission has started (I was expecting a countdown or some information). The “Failure” pop-up got stuck on the screen and blocked my view for the entire first boss fight because the Pursuit mission is close enough to the trigger that starts the battle, so attempting the side quest puts you into the fight right away. I had to quit and restart to get the prompt to go away. Even quitting back to the main menu didn’t work, I had to do a full exit the game and relaunch it. Another time, I successfully completed a sidequest, but when I returned to the map, the camera was no longer bound to my character and was way up in the sky so I couldn’t see anything. I could see my character’s icon moving on the minimap but all I got was sky. Another reload.

Even when it works, the camera is nauseating. It points in weird angles, turns around on its own, gets stuck inside things, and you character warps around so much that you can hardly tell what you’re looking at or what you’re supposed to be looking at. It’s not graceful, but holding the flight button and mashing the attack button hoping you’ll warp to the right spot is sometimes all you can do to try to fix the view. I’m not particularly sure how I beat one of the bosses, I just flew around trying to find a weak spot and mashing the attack button until my character warped to it.

I think Aztech is a cool game and I’m happy it exists and I’m proud for the people that made it because it seems like a passion project from a small group. I’m not happy to say that just as a game, it’s bad. The core basics of camera, combat, controls, and mission design are all broken at some pretty fundamental levels. I’d guess the team just bit off more than they could chew, because the ideas are sound but the execution isn’t. I’d be torn recommending it even on sale, but I’m still happy I got to play it and be reminded of how weird some PS2/Dreamcast era games could be when companies were more willing to just try on a neat concept. I’ve mentioned Stretch Panic a number of times over the years, but that’s the vibe I was getting from the game. Give the player a neat gimmick, set up boss fights that use said gimmick, and just see what happens. Games should get back to doing that more, but you still need to make sure your game is fun to play.