14 reviews liked by devonorxi


This review contains spoilers

After thinking for a while, I've come to realize that I don't really like this game. The questions it poses and the world it presents are interesting enough, yes, but at the same time there were multiple points in which I didn't find it very believable. I also didn't care much for its characters, which were mostly fine but not that compelling, and its ending, which was just brutally abrupt and unsatisfying.
Perhaps I'm just not its target audience, as I loathe browsing Facebook and Twitter. Watching a group chat on Whatsapp or Discord probably would've made a bigger impact on me. Ah, oh well.

Thumper doesn't have what I look for in a rhythm game.
First of all, it's not a music game. The sound design is great, but the rhythms you follow aren't really music - just simon says that happens to align to a beat grid, but doesn't really do much of what makes music fun to listen to.
The way it works is that the sounds of objects appearing is a few beats ahead of when you interact with them, so you can't even hear the rhythms being played too clearly because they start overlapping with much louder sound effects related to your actions. So yeah, audio is not musical, it's just gameplay feedback.
Thumper is also a troubled rhythm game. As with any title in the genre that decides to play sounds when the player acts, it can't adjust for audio and input latency, meaning your brain will always have to fight between the urge to press a button on beat and the urge to press it so that the sound effect ends up playing on beat.
I very much hate how little the game cares about making the sounds of the rhythms you're meant to follow clearly audible. There's a lot trial, error, and memorisation that could've been replaced with a much more fun and tense mental challenge of actually getting the chance to hear what you need to do and figure it out on the fly. As it is, rhythms past a few notes just disappear behind the sound effects that don't actually give you much useful information.
All that being said, the game's presentation, gameplay feedback and the actual manual challenge are pretty great, so if you click with it, you'll enjoy it a lot.

Started on my Super NES Mini, then later transferred the save data to my laptop, and finally onto my modded Wii, to be finished using SNES9x. Last time I played, the early game was giving me troubles, but I intend to return to this game soon to see it through to the end.

I hate Metroidvania. I cant take it no more.

A really good platformer with incredible music and art. And then every once in a while you have to read someone's self-insert tumblr therapy sessions.

Years before "Mario has a panic attack" became a real thing, and was (rightfully) widely derided, this game did it with full-throated sincerity. Not since Braid has there been such an amateurish and, honestly, vicariously embarrassing gulf between gameplay and story.

A pretty boring game. Gave it a solid 2 hours and the game progression felt really slow, the music wasn't good, and the voice acting was pretty bad. Capturing mechanic was at least good but I guess it wasn't for me.