The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human
released on Jan 19, 2016
From kickstarter: "The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human is a metroid-vania styled action/adventure game where you play as the navigator of Argo 9, a spaceship/submarine hybrid, thrust back to Earth in a time after humans have gone extinct. Whereupon one will have to explore to uncover the reasons for humanity's downfall meanwhile encountering monstrous sea creatures. The focus of this game lies in exploration, story and boss battles. It is up to the player to determine if the ruins of our species is a travesty or an inevitable conclusion."
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immersive with very well designed battles and a great atomosphere
The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human is a metroidvania boss rush game. You control a little submarine with a few weapons and explore the ruins of human civilization underwater. I thought it was meh. The story is pretty basic, and is mostly told through diary entries/logs you find around. Unfortunately because it is a metroidvania, I spent a bunch of time running in circles trying to find out where to go. I felt like it would be better as a linear game, as there wasn't really much in the way of exploration or secrets.
The boss designs were pretty fun, the environments were pretty generic. The art is just fine.
The game can be frustrating because the way you take damage is by bumping into things, and if you are unlucky you can pinball between objects and lose all your health in an instant. The boss fights can be pretty hard.
All in all, if you like metroidvanias and boss fights, I think you might enjoy it. For me, the backtracking and frustrating deaths outweighed the positives of the game.
The boss designs were pretty fun, the environments were pretty generic. The art is just fine.
The game can be frustrating because the way you take damage is by bumping into things, and if you are unlucky you can pinball between objects and lose all your health in an instant. The boss fights can be pretty hard.
All in all, if you like metroidvanias and boss fights, I think you might enjoy it. For me, the backtracking and frustrating deaths outweighed the positives of the game.
With a soundtrack and atmosphere this good, who cares if you're the last human.
A thoroughly average metroidvania.
+ the underwater setting is something I've not seen done before. As someone with thalassophobia, I found exploring both fascinating and dreadful
+ most of the boss battles were suitably epic
- the map was nearly useless and made backtracking a pain
- combat was clunky and made battles artificially difficult
- the ending was just not good
If you want to fight giant sea monsters, I'd say give this a go. Wait for a sale first.
+ the underwater setting is something I've not seen done before. As someone with thalassophobia, I found exploring both fascinating and dreadful
+ most of the boss battles were suitably epic
- the map was nearly useless and made backtracking a pain
- combat was clunky and made battles artificially difficult
- the ending was just not good
If you want to fight giant sea monsters, I'd say give this a go. Wait for a sale first.
hello, how are you
i am under the water
please help me
i am under the water
please help me
This review contains spoilers
An interesting twist on a Metroidvania, but not without its hang-ups.
The only weapons you ever get are your harpoon (which gets some upgrades to it for how it functions), a saw (which isn't particularly good against most bosses), and a torpedo (not a bad weapon, but more on this in a bit). The latter two weapons are designed as upgrades that also allow you to pass gated areas, so these weapons are not without merit.
The biggest issue with the saw is that you have to essentially run into an enemy to find out if it works...and some enemies are designed in such a way that this is just a death wish if you chose poorly. The torpedo is awkward because even though it breaks blocks, it's not always evident as to which blocks you'll break through in a cluster, which leads to some very frustrating sequences.
There's not much in the way of regular enemies, so most of your game is spent wandering around, plumbing the depths for bosses and upgrades. There are quite a few bosses, so you'll definitely have work to do, but it's just a lot of dodging hard-to-see instakill mines and other such griefs on your way to said bosses.
Bosses are a mixed affair. Some feel VERY RNG-based and you can be handling a boss readily and just get into a cycle of knockbacks into utter oblivion in the span of a second. You have no invulnerability frames, so when you start getting reamed, you keep getting reamed. A lot of the bosses have instakill attacks in general and some of them you physically cannot see until it's too late.
One of the bosses is an escape sequence where if it touches you, you die. This is after the torpedo upgrade, and is designed to get you used to switching weapons on the fly to deal with situations. The problem is that when you're torpedoing walls to get out of the way of the boss, you can find yourself breaking the wall but getting suddenly hung up on it and bam, do the whole sequence again. Coupled with some steam vents that are VERY DIFFICULT TO SEE, there's a section near the end where you're trying to pick your way through falling debris while avoiding steam and most likely won't even know if the steam is rising or not when you plow through. At the end of all of that, if you're not paying close attention is a mine that instakills you and you get to do it all over again. I spent a lot of deaths here because of the first two things.
You do get other upgrades, but the drone is largely useless unless you find the secret upgrades, and the thrusters can also be a mixed bag because you don't know when you're going to try and boost through an area and clip on something and get deaded. Coupled with the fact that you can do bosses out of order after the first two, you might find yourself without the jet thruster when...oh, say...fighting the escape sequence boss and not being able to dodge through debris efficiently. Yay for non-linearity, boo for making it frustrating as hell when you do go that route.
Soundtrack is stellar -- in the sense of undersea exploration. My wife came by when I was playing and commented that it reminded her of Ecco the Dolphin's music. Not a bad comparison to have.
I didn't check my time, but I think this game clocks in at about 4-5 hours with all upgrades and hardcore mode unlocked (you have to find some secrets to unlock it).
If you're needing a Metroidvania fix, you could do worse than this, but you could do better. I'd say wait for a 50% sale before picking this up. At fifteen bucks, there's no way I would recommend this at full price.
The only weapons you ever get are your harpoon (which gets some upgrades to it for how it functions), a saw (which isn't particularly good against most bosses), and a torpedo (not a bad weapon, but more on this in a bit). The latter two weapons are designed as upgrades that also allow you to pass gated areas, so these weapons are not without merit.
The biggest issue with the saw is that you have to essentially run into an enemy to find out if it works...and some enemies are designed in such a way that this is just a death wish if you chose poorly. The torpedo is awkward because even though it breaks blocks, it's not always evident as to which blocks you'll break through in a cluster, which leads to some very frustrating sequences.
There's not much in the way of regular enemies, so most of your game is spent wandering around, plumbing the depths for bosses and upgrades. There are quite a few bosses, so you'll definitely have work to do, but it's just a lot of dodging hard-to-see instakill mines and other such griefs on your way to said bosses.
Bosses are a mixed affair. Some feel VERY RNG-based and you can be handling a boss readily and just get into a cycle of knockbacks into utter oblivion in the span of a second. You have no invulnerability frames, so when you start getting reamed, you keep getting reamed. A lot of the bosses have instakill attacks in general and some of them you physically cannot see until it's too late.
One of the bosses is an escape sequence where if it touches you, you die. This is after the torpedo upgrade, and is designed to get you used to switching weapons on the fly to deal with situations. The problem is that when you're torpedoing walls to get out of the way of the boss, you can find yourself breaking the wall but getting suddenly hung up on it and bam, do the whole sequence again. Coupled with some steam vents that are VERY DIFFICULT TO SEE, there's a section near the end where you're trying to pick your way through falling debris while avoiding steam and most likely won't even know if the steam is rising or not when you plow through. At the end of all of that, if you're not paying close attention is a mine that instakills you and you get to do it all over again. I spent a lot of deaths here because of the first two things.
You do get other upgrades, but the drone is largely useless unless you find the secret upgrades, and the thrusters can also be a mixed bag because you don't know when you're going to try and boost through an area and clip on something and get deaded. Coupled with the fact that you can do bosses out of order after the first two, you might find yourself without the jet thruster when...oh, say...fighting the escape sequence boss and not being able to dodge through debris efficiently. Yay for non-linearity, boo for making it frustrating as hell when you do go that route.
Soundtrack is stellar -- in the sense of undersea exploration. My wife came by when I was playing and commented that it reminded her of Ecco the Dolphin's music. Not a bad comparison to have.
I didn't check my time, but I think this game clocks in at about 4-5 hours with all upgrades and hardcore mode unlocked (you have to find some secrets to unlock it).
If you're needing a Metroidvania fix, you could do worse than this, but you could do better. I'd say wait for a 50% sale before picking this up. At fifteen bucks, there's no way I would recommend this at full price.