October Assassination #2
Ugh I'm so frustrated! Ballistic Zen was one of the nicest surprises I've encountered recently. I had never heard of the game or have any idea what it was about, but it was bundled recently and I decided to give it a go. I ended up giving away all other games in the bundle and just kept this one. And boy, what a delight!
Ballistic Zen is a first-person platformer / parkour game. It controls basically just with the mouse - left-click to start or stop, right-click to jump. You accelerate by riding downhill or by quickly shifting between left and right. And … that's pretty much it, a whole game built upon first-person movement, which I'm a sucker for. The goal is to ride "lines", which are courses snaking through the massive, brutalist, vertical open-world. It's literally so simple yet so, so enjoyable.
The part that I hated the most is the realization that I suck at it. The first world kind of warms you up to the game. It took me a while, but eventually I was able to beat all the lines there. Then I went to the second world, and managed to beat maybe 40% of the lines. Third world, 20%, last world, none of them. I eventually made my way up the Pyramid, which is the end-game, and called it a day. Decided to pick it up again to try to clear lines I've had previously struggled with, and even though I played for a loooooooooong time, I managed to beat none of them. Which is fine because the game is still a treat and I'll be booting it up every now and then to go and have fun with it, but man, it is SO HARD to get better at it, and of course, being a niche title, there are no guides or tips and tricks for it.
Absolutely worth buying full price if you enjoy first-person parkour or platforming games with lots of wallrunning and beautifully realized movement mechanics.