Now that it has been ported to Nintendo Switch, I thought it would be a good time to jump in and see if it was my videogame version of heaven.
The story kicks off when Horatio Nullbuilt - a robot who is living in a broken-down ship in the sand dunes - is attacked, and has the power core that is powering his ship stolen. Horatio and his wisecracking assistant Crispin are dependent on the core and now without it now have to scramble to find a substitute, or if all else fails - find and reclaim their core.
I've always enjoyed stories where the main protagonist is dragged into a situation that they clearly don’t want to be in, and Horatio fits that bill perfectly, throughout the entire game he is desperate to avoid every situation and just return to his life before the attack. Crispin is a great foil, his humorous approach to every situation pairs really well with Horatio's direct ‘no-nonsense’ approach and their partnership is a highlight of the game, with the constant back-and-forth banter being funny and charming.
The pace of the game is on the slow side, and that’s not a bad thing as everything unravels slowly and at a deliberate pace, nothing is rushed. Philosophical ideas are used throughout the narrative - many contrasting and juxtaposing ideas are brought up, some are given the proper time and are well-reasoned and argued, while others are brought up but never really get in an in-depth debate and are never mentioned again, which is a bit of a shame as I would have liked to explore some of the ideas further, as the story is well told and these debates were some of my favourite parts of the game.
The world of Primordia is a very interesting place. Set years after humans' extinction, the world is now entirely inhabited by robots, most of the buildings are in ruins and the world completely lacks any beauty - everything is in ruin and most robots are struggling to survive.
The world visually is filled with oranges and browns, it lacks colour and the colour that is there is depressing, overbearing and dull. Now, that isn't to say the games' visual fits that description - the world is one of the most well-imagined and well-conceptualised places I've ever been a part of, it is hauntingly beautiful and everything the game is obviously trying to covey is completely on point. In fact, the world did such a good job of instilling a lonely, burnt out desperate place that playing the game made me feel oddly uncomfortable, if it wasn't for the characters and story being so interesting, I'm not convinced I would want to spend much time in the surroundings. This does slightly impact the game in a negative way, after being so enamoured by the atmosphere I realised having to search such deliberately bleak environments - especially when I was stuck and didn’t know what to do next - wandering back and forth between screens kind of took some of the shine off the environments.
The puzzles are ok but are definitely not the highlight of the experience, they range from simple to 'I need to look at a guide’. The latter part of the game definitely has the more interesting puzzles as the earlier ones involve a lot of combining items, and reusing certain parts, they aren't bad per se but can get a little dull.
The Switch port is - on the whole - good. I enjoyed playing this game in handheld mode, having the game on a big tv does cause some strain to the games’ pixel art style and becomes a bit blurry, I don’t think these types of games are meant for larger TVs. Being in handheld mode meant that I could use the touchscreen, which works great with a point and click adventure.
Combining the touchscreen with the buttons made for a great experience. When you press ‘Y’ all interactable objects are highlighted, this was a godsend. Now, I've actually seen discussion about this subject and I fall heavily into the ‘pro’ camp, as wandering around trying to highlight any dot on the screen isn't fun, I don’t feel like I'm missing out on the discovery side - anything that helps streamline games and make them quicker and more efficient is a big plus in my book if you would rather not have the objects highlighted… simply don’t press Y.
On a very unimportant note, whoever set the initial cursor sensitivity… wow, is it fast,! A slight flick of the finger and the cursor is on the other side of the screen, obviously, it can be changed so no big problem - but boy is it fast on default.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Like what you see in the Games Freezer?
Why not tell us what you think with a few well-chosen comments? :)
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.