Freedom Planet -- Event Preview (Nindies@Home)
1Now we move from one colorful, fast-paced game in favor of another one... this time, Freedom Planet! Instead of being like a Master System game, it looks more reminiscent of a Mega Drive (or Genesis) game... so much nostalgia for a SEGA that no longer truthfully exists!
Freedom Planet began its life long ago as a Sonic the Hedgehog fan-game (OC, do not steal!), and it totally shows... but this long after the Genesis era, it can totally serve as a love letter without getting TOO much easy flack for being how it is. Even if this main character is TOTALLY the least dragon-like "dragon" I've ever seen. Well, probably not, but it's yet another low-hanging fruit to pluck while we're having good-natured fun.
Anyway, the similarities make it such that comparisons to Sonic games of yore are unavoidable... so let's just use that as our starting point.
It shares the same exuberant embrace of insanely speedy platforming as the blast processing that Sonic pioneered, so what it immediately is is... a lot of fun. But on the other hand, you're similarly zoomed in so far that you barely get any time to react to your surroundings as they come zooming towards you. But on the other-other hand, the design on this one seems keenly aware of the unfair nature of enemy contact damage and dispenses with this notion in most cases. However, even so, there are still certain things, like spikes and spiky enemies and projectiles that will naturally damage you on contact anyway. This, of course, is further mitigated anyway by the fact that it's not simply "one hit with rings, one hit without" until you're wiped out.
So yeah, there's a ton of things that Freedom Planet already does to be "like Sonic" ...but also while trying really hard to address as many of the usual complaints I can think of in order to make it more palatable to modern sensibilities.
Further distancing itself from Sonic, there's no spindash, no cannonball-style jump attacks, and even a bunch of new actions more in line with modern platforming rather than Sonic's admittedly (and intentionally) simplistic action set. This, of course, complicates the gameplay immensely, but also gives it quite a bit more complexity in return...
So yeah, the most I've come up with is "it's like Sonic, but it's not a lot like Sonic after all"... which... uh... what does that even tell us? It's... uh... fun? Yeah, fun!
The problem is... the demo is ALSO Sonic-paced with a sort of Sonic-style stage design with lots of routes to take, but sort of hyper-speed funneling you into whichever one you decide to take and the stage whizzing past you in record time... because this is naturally the aim in the overall design. Which is GREAT if that's what you want, but it's not so great if you want to get a better feel for the gameplay at large, as is the case in a demo.
It feels like we got... the equivalent of a "Zone" of action... plus a midboss... and one sturdier-than-average regular obstacle enemy... and... a fade to a thank you screen on a final screen transition, rather unexpectedly. So... my jury's still out.
As a longtime Sonic fan, especially of the era this game is clearly aping, I'm excited. The demo hit all the right notes to fit in like a first Zone of a Sonic game would and it clearly has enough ideas to be its own thing while tickling the right itches that made entire generations fall in love with Sonic the Hedgehog (before entire generations fell OUT of love with Sonic the Hedgehog for other reasons that we obviously won't be getting into for being entirely irrelevant for the considerations of Freedom Planet itself) and it just goes a really long way to make people feel really GOOD about what they're playing.
HOWEVER... and it's a pretty big "however"... anyone who's played an old Sonic game knows that the first act and the last act feel vastly different, and that's my biggest concern here. I don't doubt that it'll feel great for awhile along slopes both literal and figurative with regard to its gameplay design... but... the art of crafting an enjoyable slope is not a trivial one.
Overall, I might've felt a little more confident in the game if we got one big boss and maybe the first "Act" of another "Zone" equivalent... just to get a better idea than just seven minutes of not-all-gameplay...
So yeah, I'm rather interested in this one... and I feel really optimistic... but that's EXACTLY what this game is designed to do to me specifically, so I'll still be wary and probably be mean to developers and wait for a sale before I jump straight into it with reckless abandon.