Laika: Aged Through Blood is an incredible game. For starters, you can see via trailers why you may enjoy its gameplay. The systems all fit together in a way that makes you pull off absurd shoot-spin-backflip-gunswitch combos while mid-air thanks to all of the moves available to you. The controls do take some time to get used to, and during that period of adjustment, you will die a lot. But from each attempt, you'll learn. Soon enough I had a really good grip on everything and felt like a badass sweeping through difficult rooms on my first try. Most of the difficult rooms in the game are boss fights, and I was surprised with how much I enjoyed them. Nothing ever felt impossible, you just need to figure out the right strategy and pull it off by using every aspect of the combat system. If you do die enough times without getting close to your previous dead bodies, you will start losing large chunks of viscera (LATB's very grim form of money). The first time this happened to me was actually pretty devastating, but you build up your viscera very quickly by traversing the wasteland and killing more birds. If anything, it convinced me to spend more money on upgrades instead of hoarding it all. To help with this, as you get further in, more and more enemies will spawn in the game world and more enemies to kill means more money. This has the added benefit of changing areas that you've already visited several times, and sometimes you'll have to rethink how you traverse the map as more elements get added. Everything in this game just fits snugly together, and it's a great demonstration of game design.
I really enjoyed the writing in LATB. Laika herself is a very compelling character. You'll see a lot of her past and what drives her to go to the lengths she goes, and how her dysfunctional relationships with both her mother and daughter shape her perspective. These relationships are very well written and I think most people will probably adore Puppy. Laika also has a past with the other residents of Where We Live (almost all of the locations in the world are named like this and I LOVE it) and you'll see of that all on display in their everyday conversations. The world itself is a dark, horrible place as Laika and other denizens of the wasteland try to avoid the genocidal birds. Some really effed up stuff happens across the course of the game, the fact that the character designs are all anthropomorphic deadens some of the blow but it didn't stop me from being saddened by events that occur. The ones I found most interesting were some of Laika's actions. Moral grey areas are a difficult thing to pull off in media: a lot of the time you'll see writers struggle and write characters inconsistently in an effort to avoid simple black and white morality in their stories. This wasn't the case here, and the LATB writers should be proud of that.
The game is also presented really nicely. Bugs were few and far between (some I noticed have already been patched) and, I mean, just look at it. The artstyle is consistently great throughout and there aren't many instances of it interfering with the gameplay. I will say though, I played this on a computer monitor, so people using smaller screens may struggle to correctly identify everything they need to look for in the hectic combat. Lastly, the music is really important for setting the tone of the game. Certain areas have set music, but for most of the wasteland you'll be playing casettes you collect and Laika plays on her casette player, performed by Spanish musician Beícoli, who herself is a character in the game as the person who performed the songs. Despite all the screwed up and badass things happening on screen, the music is very relaxed and chilled out, and it does wonders for the vibe of the game. Towards the end, I think I started to feel the short playlist of these songs even though I had collected all of them, but that's only a minor annoyance and they are still great songs (I just need a little time away from the music before I can listen to the soundtrack by itself).
With combat systems that work together beautifully, a fleshed out game world, enthralling character writing, a gorgeous art style and a killer soundtrack, Laika: Aged Through Blood exceeded all expectations I had for it (and I was pretty pumped for this). Some criticism will be (and has been) levelled at its difficulty but I found the quick restart combined with the amount of tools you have at your disposal meant that it was easy to try new things and eventually succeed. I had a blast and it's quickly become one of my favourite games. If you've ever enjoyed a challenge in video games and a good handle on game controls, I'd recommend at least trying out the demo and seeing how much you like it, because this is a banger.
I really enjoyed the writing in LATB. Laika herself is a very compelling character. You'll see a lot of her past and what drives her to go to the lengths she goes, and how her dysfunctional relationships with both her mother and daughter shape her perspective. These relationships are very well written and I think most people will probably adore Puppy. Laika also has a past with the other residents of Where We Live (almost all of the locations in the world are named like this and I LOVE it) and you'll see of that all on display in their everyday conversations. The world itself is a dark, horrible place as Laika and other denizens of the wasteland try to avoid the genocidal birds. Some really effed up stuff happens across the course of the game, the fact that the character designs are all anthropomorphic deadens some of the blow but it didn't stop me from being saddened by events that occur. The ones I found most interesting were some of Laika's actions. Moral grey areas are a difficult thing to pull off in media: a lot of the time you'll see writers struggle and write characters inconsistently in an effort to avoid simple black and white morality in their stories. This wasn't the case here, and the LATB writers should be proud of that.
The game is also presented really nicely. Bugs were few and far between (some I noticed have already been patched) and, I mean, just look at it. The artstyle is consistently great throughout and there aren't many instances of it interfering with the gameplay. I will say though, I played this on a computer monitor, so people using smaller screens may struggle to correctly identify everything they need to look for in the hectic combat. Lastly, the music is really important for setting the tone of the game. Certain areas have set music, but for most of the wasteland you'll be playing casettes you collect and Laika plays on her casette player, performed by Spanish musician Beícoli, who herself is a character in the game as the person who performed the songs. Despite all the screwed up and badass things happening on screen, the music is very relaxed and chilled out, and it does wonders for the vibe of the game. Towards the end, I think I started to feel the short playlist of these songs even though I had collected all of them, but that's only a minor annoyance and they are still great songs (I just need a little time away from the music before I can listen to the soundtrack by itself).
With combat systems that work together beautifully, a fleshed out game world, enthralling character writing, a gorgeous art style and a killer soundtrack, Laika: Aged Through Blood exceeded all expectations I had for it (and I was pretty pumped for this). Some criticism will be (and has been) levelled at its difficulty but I found the quick restart combined with the amount of tools you have at your disposal meant that it was easy to try new things and eventually succeed. I had a blast and it's quickly become one of my favourite games. If you've ever enjoyed a challenge in video games and a good handle on game controls, I'd recommend at least trying out the demo and seeing how much you like it, because this is a banger.