#34 Hyper Light Drifter
Yesterday I started playing Hyper Light Drifter which is the only game I bought in the summer sale. Yes, I'm a broken record that keeps repeating that. How could I know you're reading what I write?
Been wanting to play this game for a long time, so I was excited to finally explore its beautiful, cryptic world, but my expectations haven't been met unfortunately. The combat felt punishing and way too difficult, because it technically doesn't give you the finesse required to master the fights. Knowing it had four directions to go to, and discovering that each had a boss required to progress in the game, I was suprised to beat them all that fast. So the game was shorter than I thought, too.
But once I closed the game to take a break I realized I played 4 hours and later finished the game with almost 9 hours played in one day and it felt like I played way less.
The game grew on me and after a while my first impressions all have been eradicated - I begun to love the game more and more. The soundtrack is subtle and fits perfectly, ranging from lovely piano music to goregeous analogue synthesizers. The pixel art is beyond everything I have seen before, setting a new standard for what you can achieve with only pixels and a few colours. And the combat got easier after time once you know how to time your dashes and combos, making each encounter a well choreographed dance. Boss fights sometimes felt too easy, sometimes too hard, but overall it boils down to how well you can play - memorize attack patterns and behaviour, counter it with a dash and time your combos just right to make the most out of the small time windows where you can make your move.
In a lot of ways this game reminded me of Titan Souls, although both are completely different. If you wonder if Hyper Light Drifter is something you would like, then give Titan Souls a shot. Should be easy to get since it was bundled a bunch of times.
What's next?
So to be honest I had enough of meaningful indie games and pixel art. I am longing for an off the rack triple AAA title. Enough story to keep you invested, but nothing that occupies your mind too long, normal videogame graphics and some over-the-shoulder shooting.
I've installed Resident Evil 4, Lost Planet 3 and Devil May Cry, mainly wanting to play Resident Evil and maybe work my way to Resident Evil 6 from there.
Also now using up space on my hard drive are titles from The Purge which I might look into when I feel like it.
Hope you're all doing well, fight the backlog!
SO PRETTY
Yes, it is! And very much so! :3
Is that from the Anime you mentioned? I google that and didn’t get any images that reminded me of the screenshot I took so I was left wondering about that.
Yes, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the giants have very few appearances in the main story and serve more as the backstory which is probably why there isn’t many images of them but one of the coolest scenes in animation involves a giant from this film. :)
I added it to my wishlist some time ago (primarily because of an amazing art), but I resisted buying it during the sale, because I’ve already got enough wished games. I wish it would be longer, but most non-sandbox games I’m playing these days are shorter than 10 hours playtime =<
Did you play it with controller?
Yeah, I played with an controller and from the reviews it seems to be the best way to enjoy the game, too. I mean I needed 8.7 hours to beat it, but there’s more content to it. It has an open world with loads of stuff to discover, collect and unlock, plus it seems like I missed a few bosses since I didn’t get the only achievements that would indicate beating the game (Bully - Beat all bosses in the game). Other than that there’s also New Game+.
So if you just casually play and finish it, it’s about the 8 hour mark, if you really drain every bit of content out of it though it would be around 20 hours.