Ori and the Blind Forest

Decent game, great story.

Made by Microsoft (in Unity) you'd expect big things from this platformer, and it does deliver. The story, music and art are all fantastic. It's in the gameplay where the flaws lie. You play as the titular Ori, a cute little rabbit of light who becomes a soul eating speedster at the conclusion of the prologue.

Combat is a mouse clicky affair in the first half of the game, and while you can out run all the enemies present you probably won't want to as eating their souls gives you XP. Enough XP lets you upgrade Ori to become a more lethal and more agile ninja, and in this game agility is key as you learn when you find the spirit trees (grave markers) of your other bunny kin so that you can eat their souls too.

Run little rabbit, run!

Unlike Hyperlight Drifter, the secrets here can all be found easily once Ori is upgraded fully. Also unlike Hyperlight Drifter, as you upgrade Ori the game gets significantly easier, which is good because by then you'll be tired of the instadeath traps and all that mouse clicking combat.

I quite like that in the later areas you actually need to keep the enemies alive to progress and that making a save point requires mana, otherwise you are stuck to using the few shrines that dot the impressively large map. All up it is a game I can recommend to those who enjoy platforming. As in really enjoy, as there are some jump puzzles here that are quite tricky (not Super Meat Boy bad though). I give Ori three and a half talking trees out of five.

Blaugust Staying Motivated Week: Reviews are a staple of my blog and for good reason - here's one I prepared earlier! :P

Hyperlight Drifter

Where "WTF is going on?" is never quite answered.

In a strange world full of talking animals, you play a wandering sword/gun slinger who is following visions of a dog to unlock diamonds. What? Yes. The plot is abstract, not helped by the fact that all talking is done via pictures rather than words. This is  cool, but also leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

There are some really cool scenes.

Game play wise though this is a solid product made in Gamemaker Studio. The controls are great, ideas great, music subtle in a good way, upgrades rewarding enough to strive for yet never make you overpowered and combat (which there is a lot of) is fluid. You will take a beating until you get used to the dash/evade system especially against your first boss. The many lethal traps are also annoying to practice against.

My main gripe is how secrets are handled, many of which are just due to the top-down camera angle provided. Sure, there is a tiny mark that indicates something is there, but were you actually standing at the characters location said places wouldn't be hidden at all. Also did I mention the lethal traps? :P

In an otherwise good game, those two components feel like cheap ways to make it "harder". Anyway, still a fun ride at least one time around (it encourages replays). I give this almost three dash sprints out of five.