![]() Among other things, what would I be able to blame for my complete and total ineptitude at it? A gypsy curse? I’ve blamed my height on that, my epilepsy, the 2016 NBA Finals, and Red Dead Redemption 2’s delay. Spelunky, for example, would not be as good or memorable if it had hand-made stages. But the type of genres it lends itself to tend to be faster-paced. Now, I’m not a total hater of the idea procedural generation. I also wasn’t aware that my chief complaint about Dig and Heist had been addressed: ditching the randomized levels. That puts them one-up on Michael Bay if nothing else. ![]() Hey, I can actually tell the different robots apart now. So yeah, I wasn’t aware that they updated the graphics style. Lesson learned: if you’re making a Metroidvania, backtracking should be every bit as fun and exciting as fronttracking. And even when I did find new hidden sections, it was far more common that I could have accessed them the first time around and simply missed them. In SteamWorld Dig 2, such instances are rare. Every time I ran back to a previous section in Axiom Verge, it seemed like there were several new items I was only able to reach with the latest items I had picked up in the previous stage. So why did this end up, as of this writing, #4 on the IGC Leaderboard? A big decider for it not competing with Axiom Verge (and it didn’t, not even close) was there wasn’t enough new stuff when you backtracked. That’s one you might want to write down, Gamespot. ![]() It’s thus my responsibility to make as much effort as possible to not further engage in activities that might contribute to further expectations. It’s safe to say my enjoyment of their previous efforts already moved my expectations for their future games past neutral. But when Brjánn told me they were sequelizing SteamWorld Dig, I told them “great, let me know when it’s out.” They might be my friends, but I have responsibilities as a game critic. Over the last five years it’s been hard to not catch trailers for Cuphead (yes you pushy fuckers, I’m reviewing it next). Critics are supposed to evaluate, not talk you into a purchase. Hopefully you realize that’s not the way things are supposed to be. Some of them will have small complaints about games but choose not to include them in their, sarcastic airquotes, “reviews” because they’re afraid that might hurt the game’s sales. I know that you’re probably accustomed to critics behaving like cheerleaders or salesmen. You know, that thing that game critics shouldn’t get for games. Trailers are about creating awareness and, most importantly, hype. ![]() But that doesn’t mean I have to watch trailers for games. Where’ve you been?” Well, I’ve been here. When I first fired up SteamWorld Dig 2 and started gawking at the graphics, my social media followers were taken back. I was all set to ask which member of Image & Form was going to volunteer to be sent to the gulag for re-education as punishment for water levels, but those are kept thankfully small. ![]() You developers who think I’m a little overly harsh, hey, it could be worse. And mind you, I didn’t even write the review for the game. At this point I, to put it delicately, blew a fucking gasket and got him on the horn to cuss him out for over an hour. Eventually it found its way there, but when I fired it up I realized the map system was unsatisfactory. So did he, pulling it from the marketplace and saving it for Steam. It was originally on XBLIG but after monkeying around with it for a couple of hours I realized it wasn’t ready for prime time. There’s a developer named David Walton that did a game called Wyv & Keep. It means I have a direct line to them when stuff about their work annoys me. Actually, in a lot of ways it’s worse for them. Brjánn and his team are a really remarkable group of developers.īut being friends with me doesn’t mean a developer gets a free pass to my heart. I love to shoot the shit with Brjánn and debate on a wide range of game design topics. It’s safe to say that I consider their lead developer, Brjánn Sigurgeirsson, to be a good friend. Full disclosure: I met some of the people working behind the scenes at Image & Form in 2013, and over the last four years its grown to be one of the studios in Indieland that I admire the most. ![]()
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