🤖 Blackwind | Xbox Series X | Review | 3/10 | "Groundhog Slay" 🤖 @drakkardev @maxharvey79 #IndieGame #IndieGameDev

My first impressions of Blackwind were positive. I’m a fan of the mecha anime aesthetic, and the story of a boy having to use a super-powered robot suit (à la Titanfall) to battle enemies and rescue his father, was an appealing prospect. The voice acting is a little cheesy, but I felt like it set the scene well, with an AI voice in the suit giving instructions that worked as a tutorial without that being too contrived.

But. 

BUT.

That’s about where the good elements end.

I was discussing this game with friends and explaining that it’s quite hard to review as it’s not ostensibly BAD as such, more that it doesn’t do anything well. At least a flawed masterpiece has flashes of fun. Blackwind, sadly, is just a bit dull.

Firstly, it’s a confused game. It’s a twin sticker shooter and a melee scrapper. It’s an arcade game and it’s an RPG with puzzles. It’s isometric(ish) sometimes and other levels are in a more 3D environment. Some games can manage to do many things well, but you sense that this game would have benefited from a tighter focus as it doesn’t manage to do any of these things with aplomb.

The inside sections work better than the outside ones, as they’re simple tunnel and room affairs. Essentially dungeon crawlers, albeit dungeons in space. The fights are frequent and fast, with the enemies attacking in numbers each time. You can hack at them or shoot them. Doesn’t really seem to matter which you opt for, from what I could tell. If you do bash an alien enough times though, you can press a button to execute them (complete with animation like grabbing your foe and stamping on it with a size 12 robot boot). The trouble is, though these animations are only a couple of seconds long, the action pauses while they happen, which breaks up the otherwise frantic flow.

The camera in this game is NOT good. It’s too close in, so you often can’t see what’s shooting at you, and then it chooses odd angles at other times, making navigating more difficult than they need be. This awkward camera direction is reserved for the outdoors (Martian-looking, Total Recall vibes) sections, where you can jump and climb over obstacles. 

Well, in theory, you can. I made several attempts at jumping up and climbing obstacles, but the controls are far too clunky to make this enjoyable. A fast-paced and dramatic firefight that is immediately followed by fourteen attempts to hurdle a small fence kind of takes the energy out of the situation. TitanFAIL, you might say.

Oh, and there is a co-op mode, but frankly, I couldn’t think of anyone I disliked enough to invite to try it with me.