Lovely Planet -- Event Preview (Nindies@Home)
1So we've seen Freedom Planets, desolate alien planets for probing, and space battles with grizzled ...er... "captains" ...of... uh... spider... tanks? It's all so violent! Er, for a good cause? I think! ...what IS forma.8's cause again? It's just all so much to have to process and think over! So for a moment, let's retreat to a Lovely Planet instead.
---
... ... ...this game is really weird. Like REALLY weird. So weird that I'm pretty sure I like the spirit and enthusiasm, but we'll have to see about that.
The first and biggest surprise after... er... everything, whatever it was... all of it... is that this is a first-person shooter game! ...I know, right? Madness!
...the problem right from the get-go is that it's a dual-analog shooter, which is something I haven't voluntarily played in quite some time. Pointer controls and even gyro controls for such things have all but completely ruined me for this sort of thing. I sure hope that's a limitation of the demo, because I can't fathom putting a shooter on a platform like this without embracing the leaps and bounds of advancement that these other schemes provide... to fail to recognize that would just be silly.
... ... ...the controls are Y-axis non-inverted. And there's no option to change this that I could find in the demo. Welp, I'm screwed. I don't know when it happened, but it feels like inverted aim has been completely weeded out as the default option in favor of making up aim up and down aim down. (I know! More madness, right?) I can only vaguely grasp at straws and blame Halo and Call of Duty for reasons I can't properly qualify or quantify, seeing as how I don't personally play either, but recall being bugged that this is a thing and annoying people if I asked to be directed to the option where I might change it, assuming we weren't going to just play something else.
Gather 'round children and I'll tell you a most bizarre tale! You see, once upon a time, life bars didn't automatically regenerate while you rested behind a waist-high wall, Pressing up on your analog-based control doohickey made your viewport move down, and pushing it down made the view scan up! I don't know the true origins of this, but I figure the designers and players alike of that time had their preconceptions and conventions informed and influenced by the earliest major newfangled three-dimensional game and game-like situation: flight simulation... and indeed, nudging a tail flap up would make things go down and vice versa. And those of us dinosaur enough to remember such an epoch but haven't grown (or backslid) with the genre since then are naturally quite confused and keen to shake our fists at well-meaning individuals like yourselves.
...but yes, me playing a game like this with a control style I'm totally ruined for ever since more precise and intuitive (don't even try to argue the point, it's certifiably true, even if it's not what the newer dinosaurs are slavishly committed to and wish to similarly dig in their heels... how's that for ironic echo?) motion-based alternatives came about AND making me use the "wrong" Y-axis control... well, it feels a lot like stumbling around in a drunken stupor. (Damn you, Sakanade!)
---
So yeah, the game! ...er... it's pretty neat, I guess. I have NO idea what's up with some of this, and I can't for the life of me begin to explain some of the design choices... but here's the basic overview.
Shoot bad guys! Don't get shot by bad guys! Hide! Shoot down bad guy bullets! Don't shoot ...not-...bad...guys? Don't let the fruit fall! Shoot the fruit! Get out of the bubble before its core turns red! See? Simple!
...okay, well... SOME of these need some explanation, I guess. I'm pretty sure I can imagine a bunch of less-analytical types getting really confused and giving up at certain points. Which kind of giver-upper are you?!
First point of confusion, there are some darkened sadder-faced guys that LOOK like they could be enemies... but if you shoot one, you start over. If you see an apple flying through the sky in an arc, you HAVE to shoot it, or else you start over. If you step near an otherwise innocuous little blue sphere, a bigger mostly-transparent sphere will expand outward and wait a few seconds... if you don't get past it before it turns red, you start over upon touching it, and there's no way to get it to recede.
They also mapped the X button to restart at ANY time without confirmation, which I did once by accident and had to go through a stage all over again as a result.
...so yeah, I was already basically under an equivalent influence to driving my tanky little archer friend around drunk, and then a bunch of little things that probably needed some kind of on-screen explanation or prompt... so... my wild enthusiasm and surprise is somewhat dampered by frustration, all of which can hopefully be fixed with some minor tweaking.
I mean, I LIKE the effort, but it would be torture for me personally to play it in its current state.