Transistor
Transistor strikes me as a story that would have been better served telling itself in a different way. It throws you into the action without so much as a "new game" button standing in the way, introduces you to characters through unlockable snippets of information gathered from your moveset, and gives all dialogue through the mouthpiece of a talking sword. Or person trapped in talking sword.
As someone who completed it too...It's a different way of telling a story. A bit of
in medias res with a touch of 'backstory by unlocking all functions'.
You also forgot to introduce the most titular character in the game. Luna.
So remember what I said about how the world was more interesting then the story? This is why. It has a beautifully constructed world that feels fucking ALIVE and then the enemies are just...random mooks. Like not even random mooks being led by some big bad, just random mooks. The mooks themselves are the threat, and it is at LEAST as underwhelming as it sounds.
The mooks were people once o_o
Trustory. :3
But I *like* that review there.
BoxesWithGunsA shooter game.
Upon opening the game, I see my username logged in along with visual settings set to 'max' (Particles at Ultra, and all cosmetic options like fullscreen and others checked--the resolution doesn't go lesser than 1280x1024 or 1360x765, for the lowest I would be looking for in a windowed mode). All these gave me a good impression, though in hindsight, this impression should have considered the menu screen design being a forewarning of what was to come.
The main menu is filled with 5 buttons. New Game, Settings, Ranking, Upload, and Quit.
"Upload" seemingly means 'upload your score to {some} leaderboard online. If you are offline or suffer instable and bad internet connection like me, it will crash your game (or at least lead to 'BoxesWithGuns has stopped working...', then force close the game) due to probably failing to connect.
The "ranking" button presumably means online rankings. After clicking it, it will load the rankings or fail trying--and there is no way to 'esc' out due to the Loading screen busy loading it up and obscuring any control. In the least, if this fails to load, there's a polite message telling you of the error and a query to try again. Only then can you control anything.
'Start Game' begins with a customization screen divided into two portions--with the left being the 'build' zone, as you play as a monochromatic box as your avatar, ship, or icon designating your existence, and the right side being a preview of your ship in hypothetical combat, showing off how it basically fires its weapons and which direction it fires in. The build zone enables you to modify your box isometrically (In 2D), with each box alongside your single first box representing an individual weapon--there's a 'cost' value, along with how much "$" you currently have in the build zone as an indicator.
It lacks UI friendliness though, as the beginning player is not given any prior information towards what they're seeing, nor is it obvious that the boxes equal a
single weapon
slot (one should 'click' the box to see the various weapons available...on a not-so-goodly formatted menu). There is no 'undo' command or 'redo' command, seemingly typical as of my experience in customization screens--merely a 'save' and 'reset' option [and from there, each save is PERMANENT, which means if you built your box and realized the price is too high to buy anything else and saved it, the 'reset' just reverts to the last save available.], and a core characteristic that cannot be modified is that all this, pertaining to the whole customization screen, is in the foreground of an ever-playing, non-controllable background featuring garish lighting, vague and blurry objects floating in the scenery, and a neon-like waveform at the top and bottom borders. This is of significant mention because it obscures and messes with the visibility and worksmanship of the player working, as well as providing an irritating glow that cannot be controlled. The same background and garish theme continues right after you press the 'continue' button, which is one of four options in the customization screen [the other being Main Menu, because there's apparently no option to modify the tiny text of the menu, or the maligned formatting highlighting and underlying the descriptive text...or the background].
The Settings button has 3 areas, 'Common', 'Audio', and 'Graphics'. My goal is to control the background annoyance. It is not possible, even if I remove all added settings under 'Graphics', and the 'Common' just has two sub options:
"Gamepad {x}
Language: English."
Under Audio are two options. Enable Music, and Enable...Effects. The "Effects" setting under Audio, I have no idea about, as when the 'music' is off, nothing else plays, and if the inverse is selected, I am personally unable to see/hear what these 'effects' mean. The sound is the same, the background vibrations are the same...
And it seems there is nothing to do with anything else otherwise mentioned. At all.
The game starts and you see your tiny geometric box-form in the middle of the screen, automatically shooting whatever weapons it has, on a visibly pixelated grid. No instructions imply that the arrow keys or WASD control movement, or that the shooting follows the mouse cursor direction. You are just thrown into battle against a stream of other squares of different color which approach you in a line right from the start, and apparently they destroy your boxes upon touching you--they do not fire back. You are limited to that grid to move in. You have no control over shooting--merely the direction you shoot in, and there is no control on the fine motor movements of your box-form; inertia is all the same. Now this would be a fine shooter given this premise, but there are few certain, significant, and peculiar notes of mention to any gamer wishing to play this particular game.
Note 1: The Background.
Other than being uncontrollable and unable to be modified in anyway (including the background and otherwise in all screens), the background itself becomes an obstacle in the game. During gameplay, there's a time-tracker
set in the middle of the screen, and opague enough to overlap anything under it; this timer represents
how long you have survived. In many intervals of the game, along with no indicator of damage to other cubes (your shots undergo osmosis and explode on pixelated impact, and no sign of damage is given otherwise), the 'grid' I mentioned earlier acts like a subwoofer--it's a haze of pixels which easily blend in with the lighting.
Note 2: The Lighting.
Garish is the best adjective I could find, as during the gameplay you are barraged with flashes of light and bloom from random and unpredictable areas of the
central focus of the screen, completely hindering tactical positioning of your box-form, and also working as an obscuring field for the enemy (in a way, acting like a camera obscura--emitting a bright light that fully blinds the screen for two or three crucial seconds. In multiple, consecutive intervals). This happens regularly, though not regularly enough that it's something one can play through; the lighting is basically a distractor (which along with the background design and luminous nature of the cubes, would've worked out if actually given good effort to balance the visual aspect, unless this is what it was intended to do--and if this conjecture is true, it is perfect as an obstacle to survival, both negatively affecting the player's psyche and will to continue playing).
Browsing the achievements would give a good indication of some characteristics of the game, most notably its garish nature being a theme of playing the game for more than a few hours itself (the name being a humorous take of "Epilepsy" and the icon capturing the idea perfectly).
Final Rating: 2/10. Merit to coding and programming this game, (as on due reflection, the 'length' of one game equals the background music...though all the background music is dubstep mixed with electronics) but lacking the adjustments and additional aspects needed to make it
playable for the general audience. The formatting gives indication of how... refined the game is, along with miniscule notices like descriptive forewarning, theme, or indirect notification. It holds an intriguing concept of how the player interfaces with non-gameplay mechanics to succeed, but contains many, many flaws within execution to make this work out, or even
seem this way for the casual gamer.
...I'm still recovering and haven't played The Blue Flamingo because of this x_x
My
eyes.
"You have played 8 minutes (of gameplay) today. [out of 51 minutes of exploring and checking]."
...I couldn't take it. <_< I mean all adjectives mentioned here in their current state.
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