Progress Report #4

Apparently this is like Another World (haven't played it but I plan to) but a bit buggy. The game is quite floaty, thus making the platforming section difficult. Despite that, sparing a pocket change for this surreal game is not a bad idea. Fairly short and pretty decent.

Some of the achievements in the game involve finding then completing bonus games at obscure locations. At the time of writing there was a bonus game that nobody could ever find. I spent a lot of time trying to find it before giving up entirely. Turns out the dev never bothered to put that bonus game in and quietly removed the achievement recently. Welp.

Ah, Scribblenauts. The classic puzzle game where you can write down anything to solve problems. When I didn't own a 3DS, I was glad that they decided to port Unlimited to PC as well. Just before writing this post, I was extremely hyped to play it for the first time. I get to play it and was terribly disappointed. Honestly speaking, this particular entry of the series doesn't deserve that much praise it has gained over the years.

As someone who has previously played the two DS games to death, Unlimited feels like a single step forward and 5 steps backwards at the same time. Here's the thing. This game introduces the new object editor as its killer feature. Sure it's neat. But I'd rather not have it and get longer levels instead. The object editor is also somewhat pointless as there is objectively nothing that can take advantage of it. There are two things that I think can make the object editor relevant: Empty Sandbox levels and custom level editor. There used to be almost empty sandbox stages that we can mess around with; now gone and replaced with the hub levels. The hub levels seem restricting to me with all the pre-determined structure and NPCs strolling about. Then they also took out the custom level editor from Super Scribblenauts, the one thing that could probably make this game live longer. There's absolutely no reason to replay the levels either. On Super Scribblenauts you can replay every levels to get a golden star but with a catch: clear them three times consecutively without being able to use items that you previously spawned in your runs. This was interesting as it forces you to think new solutions to use. As an example, one run you decide to use a ladder, then the next two runs will ban the use of ladde.

My rant for this game can go on and on. Don't get me wrong though; mechanics-wise the game feels way better to play than ever. But I just can't tolerate that they decided to slack off in terms of content. Try Super Scribblenauts and you'll see just how barebones Unlimited is.

Out of all the games listed here, this the only game I finished in 2018. First game clear of this year in fact. Woot. This short surreal walking simulator often crashes after changing the resolution. It also crashed when I paused the game, strangely enough. I would not recommend people to get out of their way to get this game unless you get it from a bundle or for dirt cheap. Despite that, I'd say it is worth it to check this game out especially if you already have it in your library. Its non-linear style of narrative is quite decent and can be experienced in one sitting (15 minutes in fact. 30 minutes if you count Gravity Bones inside it as well), perfect for you fellow backlog procastinators out there.