I imagine this is what being inside a graphics card is like.
So it’s really cool and the mech design looks awesome and I was going to do my usual thing of marking out and listing off a bunch of setpieces that stuck with me, but it’s a little too lacking personality or progression or… something. It may be the fact that it feels more like Polyphony Digital is seeing what they can get out of the Playstation than tying all its moments together: you’ll fight your rival, a fleet of enemy ships, descend through a claustrophobic tunnel while avoiding obstacles, and face a psychedical final boss in the span of 30 minutes or so- and all I could really see was the tech and graphical wizardry attached to it: Metal deformation and particle effects, teleporting ships and bosses with destructible parts- all very impressive but a little hard to connect with. It’s a focus that’s probably most apparent in the unlockable missions, which skew more towards being an experimental dev room than some rigourous mechanical test, where you’ll shoot your way through a giant Mario 64-style head or face an onslaught of enemies that not only blanket the screen, but tank the framerate as well, a sense you’re there just to see if it all holds together.
It also exists in that tentative space for early 3D action games; I think it’s probably best categorized as a rail shooter, but even that feels kind of lacking classification. Often it’s more like you’re Z-targeting everything in a level, darting around and switching from first to third-person with surprising regularity- there’s kit here would have probably culled if the game had been developed a couple of years later, but it’s another side of it that speaks to that exploratory quality. What can and should a player character be able to do? What challenges do you test them on? Those seem like easy (well, easier) questions to answer now, but it’s legitimately cool seeing them test the waters over the course of the game- why not do first-person tunnel run or weird boss that breaks apart and heals itself and that you’ll need to orbit and reposition around?
Just wish it came together a bit more.
So it’s really cool and the mech design looks awesome and I was going to do my usual thing of marking out and listing off a bunch of setpieces that stuck with me, but it’s a little too lacking personality or progression or… something. It may be the fact that it feels more like Polyphony Digital is seeing what they can get out of the Playstation than tying all its moments together: you’ll fight your rival, a fleet of enemy ships, descend through a claustrophobic tunnel while avoiding obstacles, and face a psychedical final boss in the span of 30 minutes or so- and all I could really see was the tech and graphical wizardry attached to it: Metal deformation and particle effects, teleporting ships and bosses with destructible parts- all very impressive but a little hard to connect with. It’s a focus that’s probably most apparent in the unlockable missions, which skew more towards being an experimental dev room than some rigourous mechanical test, where you’ll shoot your way through a giant Mario 64-style head or face an onslaught of enemies that not only blanket the screen, but tank the framerate as well, a sense you’re there just to see if it all holds together.
It also exists in that tentative space for early 3D action games; I think it’s probably best categorized as a rail shooter, but even that feels kind of lacking classification. Often it’s more like you’re Z-targeting everything in a level, darting around and switching from first to third-person with surprising regularity- there’s kit here would have probably culled if the game had been developed a couple of years later, but it’s another side of it that speaks to that exploratory quality. What can and should a player character be able to do? What challenges do you test them on? Those seem like easy (well, easier) questions to answer now, but it’s legitimately cool seeing them test the waters over the course of the game- why not do first-person tunnel run or weird boss that breaks apart and heals itself and that you’ll need to orbit and reposition around?
Just wish it came together a bit more.
3 Comments
Tho I guess the appeal of this genre is that you can hit up the training mode if you're getting frusterated with it. Probably a just bit spoiled from Star Fox 64 lmao.
tbh I had to savescum through the final boss, so I totally get where you're coming from; something like Rez's traveling mode would really suit this.
Erato_Heti
1 year ago