If you're not familiar with what I'm doing, I'll tell you. It's simple, I'm reviewing video games.
The only difference is that I will review anything. Good or bad, old or new, real or fake, it doesn't matter. The only thing that does matter is that I can't have played the game before writing my review. Got that? Good, let's crack on shall we.
In this issue, I will be reviewing Spiders' Bound By Flame.
Now, since this game has been out for a couple of months, I had heard some things about it, mainly that it's very hard and that it had got mixed reviews. So, I was expecting something along the lines of an unpolished Dark Souls, but I didn't expect this steaming pile of shit.
First off, I was expecting this game to be hard, but while Dark Souls will kick you in the nuts as soon as you start and not stop until you turn the console off, you will still keep going back because it's a challenge, and challenges are fun, right? This, however, is difficult beyond imagining. I spent about 4 hours on it the first night and I still couldn't even survive through the tutorial. The main problem though, is the expectations. It gets compared to Dark Souls a lot because they are both difficult games. But, even though they have difficulty in common, they are nothing like each other. Dark Souls is a fantasy hack and slash style game, whereas this is more like a Cooking Mama spin off on console.
All this game is, is a present wrapping simulator. From what I could see, the sheer amount of content is endless. Presents vary in shape and size from CDs and DVDs, all the way up to cars and elephants. There are even levels where you get multiple presents to wrap, but only a limited amount of paper, which is very nice as it brings more of a puzzle element to it as well as the simulation. As a whole the game is also one of the few that actually teaches real life skills too. Everyone knows that males can't wrap presents for shit, this game will teach them. The difficulty comes in when it is time to put the bow on the present. For some reason, every present needs to have a bow on it with a ribbon. The problem is, and this is where the game gets its name from, every single bow and ribbon is made of fire. The wrapping of the presents is not a problem at all, but as soon as that bow touches the wrapping paper, the whole thing goes up in flames. Admittedly, the animation of the flames on the PS4 version is very nice to look at, and I think they actually burned all of the different things you can wrap in game to make sure that they got the sound of them burning right.
The story is very minimal, you own a shop that provides a present wrapping service and you go from opening up on your first day, all the way through to the moment you retire. Unfortunately, Spiders missed this opportunity to develop the game play even further into including customer interaction, and providing a good all round customer experience to encourage repeat custom, something that even free games like Papa's Pizzeria does better. But no, they went with more of a less is more approach that just left the game feeling unfinished and sloppy.
The graphics, I've already touched upon with the flames looking very nice. And honestly, so does everything else. But that's about all I can say about graphics, it looks nice, there are no major flaws there, but at the same time, there's no wow factor to them either.
And last, but not least, the music. This is done very well. It is far and away the best part of this game with the entire score being original music by Olivier Deriviere, it is just plain genius. I can't say much more about the music because words are unable to do such beautiful work justice. It is light-hearted in the right moments while effortlessly switching to provide a tense atmosphere during the more difficult parts. And the hauntingly perfect melody that plays on the game over screen is almost good enough for me to look forward to burning my shop to the ground. This is the first game that I have actually gone out and bought the soundtrack for, and it has an almost permanent spot in my CD player.
Alas, you cannot polish a turd, and while the graphics are solid and the music and sound is nigh on perfect, the game itself is unplayable. I put a total of 35 hours into this piece of shit and the only thing I've got to show for it is 3 broken PS4 controllers and an awesome CD.
2/10 and I want a refund.
Until next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment