Tl;dr- complete the first level, then back out to the main menu so that you can continue on Medium difficulty. Unfortunately, the default’s overly generous bullet-time hinders the pacing of the game.
Playerunknown’s Never Yield is a runner game comprised of 13 levels and four kinds of obstacles that correspond with a face button. It’s a relatively simple “dodge the hazards” joint, sending the player character hurtling through action movie setpieces (jump over the boxes, slide under the car!), and I often found myself in a complete flow state reacting perfectly to everything it threw at me.
The presentation is king here. Great, passionately comprised soundtrack, combining influences of 90’s trip-hop, turntablism and whatever the fuck Jet Set Radio is doing. Solid cel-shaded art style adorning urban environments that are bustling with details. Levels are bookended by clunky cutscenes that are hard not to love.
Undoubtedly an impressive technical and sensory achievement from solo developer “Aerial_Knights”, but the game doesn’t quite come together in a satisfying enough way for me to enjoy it much beyond its surface.
It doesn’t take long before I realised that I was merely responding to the ~colour~ of the upcoming obstacle’s telegraph, as the game instead strictly demands certain buttons be pressed for specific hazards. Many of my deaths were ones where the game demanded a slide from me, where the jump would very easily have cleared it as well. This essentially just turns the game more into Simon Says than a bombastic parkour setpiecefest. One such button corresponds to a “sprint” move, allowing you to crash through certain obstacles and increase your movement speed to push for a faster clear time. Sadly, this move breaks the game more often than not, messing with the flow of obstacles, confusing the bullet-time slowdown, and sending you to an untelegraphed death; come the final levels, I grew too scared to use it, the checkpoints grew fewer and further between.
Honestly not a bad way to kill an hour lol. I enjoyed the game when it let me enter the zone, even if it had shortcomings that dragged me out of the experience every so often. Would be more fun if it allowed the player to respond to hazards in a more freeform way, very much belies the whole point of parkour, but ah well.
Playerunknown’s Never Yield is a runner game comprised of 13 levels and four kinds of obstacles that correspond with a face button. It’s a relatively simple “dodge the hazards” joint, sending the player character hurtling through action movie setpieces (jump over the boxes, slide under the car!), and I often found myself in a complete flow state reacting perfectly to everything it threw at me.
The presentation is king here. Great, passionately comprised soundtrack, combining influences of 90’s trip-hop, turntablism and whatever the fuck Jet Set Radio is doing. Solid cel-shaded art style adorning urban environments that are bustling with details. Levels are bookended by clunky cutscenes that are hard not to love.
Undoubtedly an impressive technical and sensory achievement from solo developer “Aerial_Knights”, but the game doesn’t quite come together in a satisfying enough way for me to enjoy it much beyond its surface.
It doesn’t take long before I realised that I was merely responding to the ~colour~ of the upcoming obstacle’s telegraph, as the game instead strictly demands certain buttons be pressed for specific hazards. Many of my deaths were ones where the game demanded a slide from me, where the jump would very easily have cleared it as well. This essentially just turns the game more into Simon Says than a bombastic parkour setpiecefest. One such button corresponds to a “sprint” move, allowing you to crash through certain obstacles and increase your movement speed to push for a faster clear time. Sadly, this move breaks the game more often than not, messing with the flow of obstacles, confusing the bullet-time slowdown, and sending you to an untelegraphed death; come the final levels, I grew too scared to use it, the checkpoints grew fewer and further between.
Honestly not a bad way to kill an hour lol. I enjoyed the game when it let me enter the zone, even if it had shortcomings that dragged me out of the experience every so often. Would be more fun if it allowed the player to respond to hazards in a more freeform way, very much belies the whole point of parkour, but ah well.
3 Comments
i was gonna say "thats actually a pedophile shouting nonsense over a breakcore beat" but like really thats hitting the nail on the head
GutterTrash
3 years ago