ha wow man i liked this back in the day

i do not like it now

i sat there going for one of the secrets for the achievement dozens of times and it was just luck i finally got it, half the time the catapult launch would kill me, a quarter of the time i wouldn't even make it to the level exit

and that wasn't even the most frustrating thing, i swear i don't remember the game being as broken as it is in this build, like sliding down tunnels was extremely inconsistent and stuff, i just don't know

and that's not even mentioning he did an update which broke achievements, so i had to go back to the build that allowed it on steam, but the new "definitive edition" also just.. removes features full on, it's a really weird situation

anyway, this game is bad, but that's all right, edmund's still making other great games

I played a little bit of Gish maybe... 8 years ago? I don't recall why I put it down, but after playing again today as part of my 2000s video gaming adventure, I figured out pretty quickly why. It plays as a platformer, but it's pretty awkward at times to even aim and land your jumps since you have to bob up and down and can't change your momentum fairly well. I also found myself without enough momentum to stick to walls (or too much momentum to stick to ceilings) and this led to a pretty frustrating experience unfortunately. Couple this with a boss fight where I just got assaulted by enemies and could barely jump, much less land successful attacks. I think it's a pretty cool idea but there are definitely much better games that pull this off nowadays and it unfortunately has not aged well in my mind.

gish is one of those games where you either mesh with it really well and get a hang of its weird control scheme, or you absolutely cannot stand it and find its controls to be way too unintuitive and frustrating.

that being said, i think im in that first camp. i love gish and think its a really interesting piece of edmund history. its interesting to see a game that retains edmund's more grody style from his older works like the badlands, and while its certainly not a great looking game from an objective standpoint, i cant help but love how it looks.

the controls are really odd and take a lot of getting used to, but are REALLY satisfying once you can wrangle them. that being said, its certainly not for everyone, and are extremely unintuitive for newcomers. its something you gotta get a feel for on your own, and i think it could be better explained ingame.

overall, id say check out gish if you either
A.) want to see an interesting part of edmund mcmillen's game history

or B.) enjoy wack games with really jank mechanics and controls