| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PC | 7.50 |
| Overall | 7.50 |
|
I have wanted to write the review for a while, I finally finished the game yesterday after 40+ hours. Yes over 40 hours in a 2D Metroidvania like game. Why did it take so long, cause this game was made in hell, it is the stuff of nightmares. It also happens to be bloody brilliant. The best way to review the game is to simply describe my journey with the game from beginning to end. It begins like a long lost SNES classic. A 2D metroidvania style of game with the setting of an Indiana Jones movie. Your character is like a Indy, whip and all and he enters some ancient ruins to discover the secrets of the mother of all creation. The graphics capture the 16-bit look perfectly with colorful backgrounds and detailed sprites. They didn't just nail the look, the music is INCREDIBLE! This is every bit as good as a Castlevania soundtrack, these are songs that will stick with me all my life. The first few hours made me think this game was sent from the heavens, a gift to every gamer who ever loved this kind of action adventure game. Every single element from the combat to the exploration was clicking. What differentiated La Mulana to say Castlevania were the puzzles, they were everywhere and most required some good thinking skills. There is no hand holding here, you have to read some old tablets that offer clues to puzzles. I wasn't just moving around a map fighting monsters, in this game I felt like I was exploring an ancient tomb and I had to figure out my own way just like a true tomb raider would. Every bit of progress you made had to be earned. Getting from one area to another isn't as easy as just moving forward. There are loads of puzzles to solve that open up various paths needed to get around. A boss is not waiting for you at a certain room that you so happen to find; instead it is a process of puzzles and a key like item that is needed to finally battle a boss. I was in love, I actually had to think. It had every single element I love about Metroid but real puzzles littered everywhere. Actual exploration, no objective marker, no clue what so ever in where you should go. It was total freedom and it all made sense. I would be saving hint text from previous areas and finding a room later on that the hint alluded to allowing me to figure out a solution to a trap or find a hidden path. The game kept opening up at a steady pace with new items being found every hour or so. The combat was difficult but fair and platforming skills were just as needed as combat. For quite some time I believed this game would join the same ranks of Super Metroid and SOTN. Like some demented horror movie this was all a setup, to make it seem like everything was perfect before the horrifying truth would be revealed. It was as if the game would temp you deeper and deeper into the madness and before you knew it you were stuck in a gaming version of hell. Forget Demon's Souls, that is not hard, DS is stern but fair. La Mulana is doesn't believe in fair, it hates you, it wants to see you quit and possibly cause bodily harm to yourself. It will pick at you in every which way a game can piss a person off. It will find your weakness, it will break you and just when you think you can't take it anymore it pushes you over the edge into madness. This game doesn't want you to simply throw your controller in a fit of rage; no it wants you to throw the controller, break the computer, enter a depression and perhaps rethink your entire life. This game is pure fucking evil. It starts off with little things like realizing you have absolutely no clue where to go. There was a time where yoy were finding new areas constantly, puzzles made sense, progress was happening. Then it stops, all paths lead to a seemingly dead end. So I went back and read all the text tablets, there had to be a clue somewhere. So after 30 minutes of running in circles you find that in one room if you move a certain stone or something in a certain way that opens a door somewhere else and there you go. 10 minutes later I am stuck again. Hmm now what. 1 hour later I find that i am supposed to randomly talk to the old man at the very beginning of the game who gives you an item needed to proceed, that's kind of random. The new areas keep coming, gigantic levels all maze like. One way paths trap you in certain locations forcing you to warp back to the start to find the right way through. The game world grows and grows, countless text tables litter the world with tons of clues that make no sense what so ever. You can only store 20 clues for reference at a time into your in game computer, you surpass 20 clues in no time. You know you need certain items to cross certain paths but where the hell is that item. And why is everything constantly trying to kill me! Not only is navigating the game and simply figuring out where to go a pain, to top it off everything is constantly trying to murder you. There are one hit kill traps all over. Oh look a treasure chest yay!! BOOM! Oops it was a bomb, your dead, start at the last save point. Oh let me cross this pathway, floor gives away, you fall into a bed of spikes. Sorry no way out you have to teleport out to a warp point, haha do the level again. Oh and just in case that wasn't bad enough this game has the Castlevania hit fly back animation. You know the one, where if Simon gets touched he flies backward (or forward, it never made sense which direction he would be pushed, and this game is the same thing) in a stunned state where you have zero control over the character until it hits solid ground. This leads to areas where you have to climb multiple platforms to go up 4 screens up only to be hit by a bat, get stunned and pushed off the platform and watch your character fall all four screens back down to the bottom. FUN! The health system is all messed up too. There are no healing items at all. The only way to heal up is to go swim in a spring that is at the start of the game, you can always warp there which means a lot of the time you will be warping back and walking to the spring. You cant warp back to the area you were at unless you found that areas warp point, which meant you had to go into new areas with whatever health you had and hope to survive long enough to find that warp point. There is a bar of exp that if filled refills your life but that takes a while to fill up. Every boss must be taken down in one shot and none have a checkpoint near them so dying means about 2 minutes of travel time just to get back. You will die a lot. By the middle of the game you find that every area of the map has a "backside", basically the game is twice as big as you thought it would be. Thats when it really gets hard, abandon all hope of figuring anything out yourself. Nearly every single screen either has a puzzle or some text about a puzzle. These texts are scattered around the world in no order, you will find text on a solution to a puzzle you find 30 hours into the game, yes you are supposed to remember that tablet you found at the very beginning. Even if you so happen to figure out that a clue belongs to a puzzle you are at just deciphering what the clue means could be a mission. They are like vague riddles like "Reveal the light to the grieving twins. Reveal the light to a world destroyed. The hero confers light upon the twins as they hold up the world." With that you are supposed to remember there is a statue of twins some 10 levels back and when it says reveal the light it means you are supposed to shoot a flare up to the statues eyes, only then it opens a treasure you need. That is nothing compared to the insanity the game expects you to figure out by the end. You need to learn a new numerical systems and hand draw entire maps if you are too successfully solve the final puzzles, even then its still a long shot that it would make sense. I ended up using a guide for most of the final hours and even with that it was a pain in the ass. Some of the tasks you have to accomplish is surrounded by some many traps, or one way paths that force you to redo everything. Some times you may beat a boss only to have it blow up in your face at the end, instant death, do it again! Use a guide, it is impossible to figure this game without one unless you document every single piece of text, every single inch of the map and every connecting doorway to different section. There is no way for me to accurately describe how nonsensical some of the puzzles are. The crazy thing is that some make perfect sense, those are always a joy to complete. But for everyone of those you get something that feels totally random, oh but its not cause the clue needed for the solution was in that fucking hidden room you passed 15 hours ago, durrr. And yet despite all that I loved playing this game. The boss battles are so fantastic, giant sprite monstrosities that fill up the screen. Most have some awesome new gameplay mechanic thrown in like riding in a mine cart, or having to use giant traps to kill the boss, or flying a spaceship. Combat against all enemies and sub bosses is generally fun as hell and the weapons/subweapons you acquire all have uses against certain types. Your arsenal ends up rivaling even the best Castlevania heroes. Everything about the game works when there is a steady flow to the exploration, when progress makes sense. Sadly the game enjoys smashing your head into a brick wall about every 10 minutes. La Mulana was so close to becoming an instant classic. The elements that made it so special, mainly the sense of true non hand holding exploration and complex puzzles ultimately lead to its undoing. The developers did not know where to stop, they reached a point where they figured this maybe too challenging for players and simply kept on pushing. I cannot recommend this game to anyone, especially you guys here. There is not one of you that can endure what I went through to finish this game, there is no point to even try. Just know that there is a brilliant game here that is completely ruined by excess difficulty and deliberate frustrating design. |
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Posted by Dvader Sat, 24 Aug 2013 07:32:12
Sat, 24 Aug 2013 07:32:24
Not as good as Witcher 2. 
Sat, 24 Aug 2013 09:06:19
I suppose you could say it needed more mid-level puzzles.
Sat, 24 Aug 2013 16:28:34
Mon, 26 Aug 2013 11:22:39
Fuck...I was just gonna say NOT AS GOOD AS WITCHER 2...and Vader goes and spoils the fun.
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