i'll say outright that planet laika is a game i love in spite of itself. it's a game that's pretty regularly occupied my thoughts since i played it a few months ago in a single sick-day off work, both for the extremely profound moments of originality, thematic depth, and oddball enthusiasm, and also lamenting some of its clearly underbaked attributes that keep it pretty safely outside of 'masterpiece' territory. planet laika is a game i love more than my score may reflect; on a note of personal favoritism, it probably lands somewhere in my top 30 or so video games, but it's an obtuse mess that speeds down the tracks so passionately and so hard that by the time you're booted off the ride you're left wondering if this was a full game or a 10-hour proof of concept for an unmitigated masterpiece.
on paper, this game is tailored to my tastes in art pretty perfectly. you've got quintet's fingerprints pretty noticably all over sections of this game, you've got jung and freud pollock-ed all across the manuscript, the likes of andrei tarkovsky nearly shot-for-shot layed over the imagery and plot on such an undeniable level i couldn't help but return to 'solaris' and 'mirror' (my personal favorite of his) shortly after my playthrough, and of COURSE you've got all the judaic lorebuilding i could ask for this side of xenogears, with hints of majora's mask, mother 64, and moon all over the work at large. so WHY is this thing not a damn masterpiece? that's what i wanted to know too!
laika's issues boil down to two pretty major faults: it's far too short to stick the landings its passionate plot and themes demand, and the gameplay and plot progression is far, far too obtuse for its own good. granted, i played this with a fan translation - though if i'd really wanted to, i suppose my novice japanese would've resulted in at least equal amounts of confusion - and actually spoke to the translator about some of my problems with the game. from what i can tell from both japanese and english form-goers that arhcived their playthroughs of the japanese title over the years, this isn't the translation's fault. the game emphasizes communication with all of its colorful cast, but sometimes the strings between one plot point or character beat to the next boil down to lucky guesses. i'd mark this up as a similar situation to moon; a game that demands supplementary reading material, though in laika's place this doesn't yet exist, that might help prod lost players in the right direction.
as far as the rushed elements of the story, i'd like to keep things relatively spoiler-free, so i'll keep this brief. many uses of religious or philosophical imagery or concepts are SUPER creative and clearly there out of a passion for the topics, but many of these ideas don't feel supplemented or necessary or really even earned in some cases. i think if this game had another 5 to 10 hours, maybe around the length of a first chrono trigger playthrough, to iron this out, we'd have the masterpiece i so wanted this game to be. as it stands, i think terranigma remains the quintet game that delivers on the things it wants to say with these similar ideas the strongest.
as it stands, planet laika is a game i'd recommend any arthouse enthusiast, any curious party with a love for this era of gaming; i think it's a hair short of a masterpiece, but it remains a deeply unnerving, wildly creative, and harrowing experience you're not likely to wipe the psychedelic trail of slime it leaves on your brain away any time soon.
on paper, this game is tailored to my tastes in art pretty perfectly. you've got quintet's fingerprints pretty noticably all over sections of this game, you've got jung and freud pollock-ed all across the manuscript, the likes of andrei tarkovsky nearly shot-for-shot layed over the imagery and plot on such an undeniable level i couldn't help but return to 'solaris' and 'mirror' (my personal favorite of his) shortly after my playthrough, and of COURSE you've got all the judaic lorebuilding i could ask for this side of xenogears, with hints of majora's mask, mother 64, and moon all over the work at large. so WHY is this thing not a damn masterpiece? that's what i wanted to know too!
laika's issues boil down to two pretty major faults: it's far too short to stick the landings its passionate plot and themes demand, and the gameplay and plot progression is far, far too obtuse for its own good. granted, i played this with a fan translation - though if i'd really wanted to, i suppose my novice japanese would've resulted in at least equal amounts of confusion - and actually spoke to the translator about some of my problems with the game. from what i can tell from both japanese and english form-goers that arhcived their playthroughs of the japanese title over the years, this isn't the translation's fault. the game emphasizes communication with all of its colorful cast, but sometimes the strings between one plot point or character beat to the next boil down to lucky guesses. i'd mark this up as a similar situation to moon; a game that demands supplementary reading material, though in laika's place this doesn't yet exist, that might help prod lost players in the right direction.
as far as the rushed elements of the story, i'd like to keep things relatively spoiler-free, so i'll keep this brief. many uses of religious or philosophical imagery or concepts are SUPER creative and clearly there out of a passion for the topics, but many of these ideas don't feel supplemented or necessary or really even earned in some cases. i think if this game had another 5 to 10 hours, maybe around the length of a first chrono trigger playthrough, to iron this out, we'd have the masterpiece i so wanted this game to be. as it stands, i think terranigma remains the quintet game that delivers on the things it wants to say with these similar ideas the strongest.
as it stands, planet laika is a game i'd recommend any arthouse enthusiast, any curious party with a love for this era of gaming; i think it's a hair short of a masterpiece, but it remains a deeply unnerving, wildly creative, and harrowing experience you're not likely to wipe the psychedelic trail of slime it leaves on your brain away any time soon.