Platformers are by far my favourite genre, so I was incredibly excited to give this game a go. It's hyped up as one of those indie masterpieces, on par with the likes of hollow knight and stardew valley. Unfortunately, it was off the mark for me in quite a few ways. Although the developers clearly did a great job with the player mechanics, their level design is in equal parts abysmal, absolutely putrid.
At its best, Celeste provides some exhilarating platforming that will make you feel like a gaming god, but at its worst, it'll make you wonder why you even bother playing video games. There truly are several decisions made by the developers that are just straight up game design terrorism. Here's a non-exhaustive list of them:
- A stamina mechanic that never needed to exist
- You don't know how much stamina you have left until you're already running out
- Frustrating cycles on moving obstacles that feel super inconsistent
- Momentum based jumps contradict basic intuition from real life physics
- Joystick controls are completely unusable due to forcing analog directions
- Difficulty is often increased by a negativist approach, through limiting the power of the player, rather than adding new mechanics that are harder to master
- Insufferable enemies that add unpredictability where it only serves to frustrate
- Hardest parts of a screen are often at the very end, so you have to repeat a large chunk of gameplay ad nauseum just to learn that part
The story is also incredibly mid, and the fact that people praise it blows my mind. It's one of the most on the nose takes I've ever seen on mental illness and the characters are all super one note. The fact that the dialogue is so mediocre only adds salt to the wound. The music can get really repetitive and annoying while you're grinding through the tougher levels, and they could've used a much more minimal soundscape.
With that said, the highs for this game are very high. When the stars align and the mechanics are all working together in harmony the game is truly a joy to play. Unfortunately the lows are much more frequent.
At its best, Celeste provides some exhilarating platforming that will make you feel like a gaming god, but at its worst, it'll make you wonder why you even bother playing video games. There truly are several decisions made by the developers that are just straight up game design terrorism. Here's a non-exhaustive list of them:
- A stamina mechanic that never needed to exist
- You don't know how much stamina you have left until you're already running out
- Frustrating cycles on moving obstacles that feel super inconsistent
- Momentum based jumps contradict basic intuition from real life physics
- Joystick controls are completely unusable due to forcing analog directions
- Difficulty is often increased by a negativist approach, through limiting the power of the player, rather than adding new mechanics that are harder to master
- Insufferable enemies that add unpredictability where it only serves to frustrate
- Hardest parts of a screen are often at the very end, so you have to repeat a large chunk of gameplay ad nauseum just to learn that part
The story is also incredibly mid, and the fact that people praise it blows my mind. It's one of the most on the nose takes I've ever seen on mental illness and the characters are all super one note. The fact that the dialogue is so mediocre only adds salt to the wound. The music can get really repetitive and annoying while you're grinding through the tougher levels, and they could've used a much more minimal soundscape.
With that said, the highs for this game are very high. When the stars align and the mechanics are all working together in harmony the game is truly a joy to play. Unfortunately the lows are much more frequent.