Post by RadicalRex on Nov 11, 2024 17:50:16 GMT
Valfaris (Steam)
Heavy metal action platformer that gets a lot of praise but I wasn't feeling it. Audiovisually, I thought it was ugly and for a heavy metal game I found the soundtrack surprisingly bland and subdued. The triple weapon system of having pistol, melee and a heavy weapon that is charged up by hitting enemies with melee is interesting, but sadly pistols have annoyingly low fire rates and melee attacks are slow to come out and feel weirdly fluffy so it all felt pretty unsatisfying. I guess the slowness is deliberate to make it feel heavier and meatier (along with the inertia-based movement), but I don't know it just didn't work for me.
There are major visibility issues, it's mostly dark and enemies have a tendency to blend into the background. The game loves to spam flashy (and ugly) 32-bit style visual FX which doesn't help, especially when there are attacks that are like giant clouds with gradients of transparency and it's completely unclear where the hitbox is. The most dangerous thing about melee combat is that there's so much VFX and gore flying around that it can become near-impossible to see if there's still an enemy in front of you.
At its best the action is alright, but often it just feels clunky and haphazard, a few bosses in particular had unpredictable RNG attacks with horrible hit detection, one of them even sniping you from off screen all the time, that one was in the late mid-game I think but it was the one that took me longest. Difficulty in general is imo slightly above average for this type of game, but mitigated by an abundance of checkpoints. I definitely liked that there were so many but I can't help but feel that they were sometimes glossing over often clunky and chaotic gameplay.
Of course, the less you enjoy a game, the shorter you want it to be, and spoiler alert I didn't enjoy Valfaris much. In the end I got a total duration of 7 hours which was 6 more than I cared for. It took me two weeks or so to finish because I often couldn't stand playing more than one checkpoint a day.
5/10
Heavy metal action platformer that gets a lot of praise but I wasn't feeling it. Audiovisually, I thought it was ugly and for a heavy metal game I found the soundtrack surprisingly bland and subdued. The triple weapon system of having pistol, melee and a heavy weapon that is charged up by hitting enemies with melee is interesting, but sadly pistols have annoyingly low fire rates and melee attacks are slow to come out and feel weirdly fluffy so it all felt pretty unsatisfying. I guess the slowness is deliberate to make it feel heavier and meatier (along with the inertia-based movement), but I don't know it just didn't work for me.
There are major visibility issues, it's mostly dark and enemies have a tendency to blend into the background. The game loves to spam flashy (and ugly) 32-bit style visual FX which doesn't help, especially when there are attacks that are like giant clouds with gradients of transparency and it's completely unclear where the hitbox is. The most dangerous thing about melee combat is that there's so much VFX and gore flying around that it can become near-impossible to see if there's still an enemy in front of you.
At its best the action is alright, but often it just feels clunky and haphazard, a few bosses in particular had unpredictable RNG attacks with horrible hit detection, one of them even sniping you from off screen all the time, that one was in the late mid-game I think but it was the one that took me longest. Difficulty in general is imo slightly above average for this type of game, but mitigated by an abundance of checkpoints. I definitely liked that there were so many but I can't help but feel that they were sometimes glossing over often clunky and chaotic gameplay.
Of course, the less you enjoy a game, the shorter you want it to be, and spoiler alert I didn't enjoy Valfaris much. In the end I got a total duration of 7 hours which was 6 more than I cared for. It took me two weeks or so to finish because I often couldn't stand playing more than one checkpoint a day.
5/10
