Update Sixty-Five: 15 October 2017
ABZU
7.4 hours, 12 of 12 achievements
7/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
A genuinely beautiful game marred by its awful, awful, awful controls and by failing to be more than Journey but under water this time.
ABZU gave me a headache.
I’ve beaten the game. I’ve collected all the things. The credits play, and you get to swim around in one last area as the camera serenly rotates in place. Oh look, there’s the _very last__ collectumable. I have to get it to 100% complete the game.
Except I can’t. I’m up there, high up camera left, swimming in a circle. Because the controls are tied to the camera and the camera is slowly moving.
I spent the entire credits, what’s supposed to be a fun and reflective experience, swearing and viciously trying to finagle my little swimming girl over to get the LAST THING this was the LAST THING - and that’s not great.
A lot of people said so and I should have listened: the controls are pretty bad. The few times precision is required - mostly for collecting extra bits - it’s infuriating.
My computer could also barely run this: I turned everything down to low and still experienced several crashes and graphical glitches, worst of all was a rapid, blinding flashing that would come from your little drone that took up most of the screen whenever it was present. Thankfully A) it wore off relatively quickly and B) I’m not prone to seizures but was still incredibly uncomfortable.
My other gripe was that it was kind of talked about as ‘Journey but under water’ and it really didn’t do much to differentiate it from that. I was okay with it until it ripped off the you die but then you’re reborn into an EVEN BETTER place as a reward aspect, something that moved me so much in Journey I sobbed for a solid fifteen minutes. Seeing the precise same beats again really left me cold, and a little pissed.
I haven’t rated it lower because… I mean, god damn it, I can SEE all the work that went into this game, and I know a lot of the problems I had with it were due to my own beloved but pretty old laptop. I am happy this game got made, and exists - I want more games like it to exist! I do want people to try it and see for themselves - especially if you can’t get a PS3/PS4 to play Journey. This game has merit… it just didn’t click with me, not today.
Next up: I haven’t played a hidden object game in a while, and I really liked the first entry of this series. Time for more spookiness!
See you soon!
OMG YESSSS
I’ve been bullied all week cause I thought abzu was beautiful but had shitty controls.
YOU HAVE JOINED MY SIDE TAKE THAT SKANDA!!!
Part of that was also the fact I was playing in a place with other people/ had it muted but still that was found out after all the ranting about not liking the controls.
You were not bullied. <_< And it was the fact you played it muted!!!
Playing it muted was definitely a bad idea - the score WAS beautiful, in a way that reminded me of watching adventure movies from the 80’s and 90’s in my youth.
It was a fight…. and I don’t want to fight my controls X_X
Aww, that’s too bad. :( Were you using keyboard+mouse or a controller? I was using a controller and had some difficulty until I inverted the y-axis controls, then it felt much more natural to me. I didn’t have any crashes or glitches (that I recall). I can see how one’s experience would be diminished by these things. I also don’t recall an issue with that last collectible…but maybe I grabbed it before the credits rolled and the world started spinning? I don’t recall. And finally, I never played Journey so I didn’t have that comparison in mind.
In any event, I’m sorry it was a chore. :(
I was playing with a controller and mucked around some in the starting area to get used to it. I think the problem was being unable to toggle sensitivity. I would slightly edge the joystick and my little swimmer would yaw wildly in that direction. That is not great for precision movements.
The real crime is having the controls tied to the camera, and then have the camera move itself sometimes. It’s a bitch when the camera WANTS you to go in a direction and you don’t want to go there yet. I literally was fighting with the game.
I don’t think you could have - the collectible only comes on screen after about 15 seconds into the credits. Maybe you just had better directioneering than I did when navigating your little buddy.
Aw, that sounds too bad (which is nearly the same way Trent started! O.O) :(
But! Look forward, you’ll play some Hog next, that’ll have (at least) not those stupid control problems :) (I guess. Never had control problems with Hogs, apart from those that where obviously intended to be for a mobile or tablet, but… yeah :] )
Happy hog killing!
Maaaaan, I soooo missed saying that! <3
Me, too! I do miss them. It’s like having your favorite food over and over again - yes, it’s p much the same taste every time… but that’s why you like it, right?
Absolutely! nod
So I had the old Lady Cat just now on my lap and since she always occupies a hand with that I started the first Nightmare games! Thanks for reminding me of it :)
aww sorry you didn’t like Abzu. I think I didn’t mind the controls much because i started on keyboard which was abysmal and by the time I switched to controller it felt much much better. I also wasn’t going for 100% so that took the stress off. If anything, at least it leads to some very pretty screenshots!
Hopefully you have better luck with nightmares from the deep 2 :)