Hob

Usually, I don't review a game after just four hours of gametime, but the average time of all players is 4h46min, so I think I have a good impression of it. There's a good game in there somewhere, because the elements are there. The graphics are stylized but beautiful, the fighting system works fine and many of the mechanics are well integrated. You run around, kill monsters, solve simple puzzles with levers and blocks, like in many other games. So what is missing? First, I found the equipment system lacking. You can improve your life, stamina and sword, as well as upgrade your combos and minor fighting techniques. While there are no numbers in the game, you are basicly just raising your stats. No new weapons, no armor, no special abilities. I did not notice any difference with many of the upgrades. So collecting and exploration is not the meat of the game. Then there's the lack of story. The creators call it a "wordless narrative", but to be frank, it's just no narrative to speak of. It's the typical video game plot: Some kind of evil plague is spreading, here's a sword, go save the world. You don't know what your character's motivation is and that takes a lot of my motivation away. You don't know what you are doing, you are just pushing buttons and killing monsters to see what happens next. There's also the problem that the overworld is nicely created and colorful, but you are going to go into a lot of dungeons. Those are always few drab tiles over a grey abyss without much decoration. Think of Hob like one of the older 2D Zelda games without the ability to find equipment and without the story. You can't play it as an immersive adventure and you can't play it as dumb-fun video game.

Hob is a beautiful game and is in general fun to play. Before I explain the greatness, let me warn about some weaknesses: 1) In a cutscene in the very beginning the game crashed three times. In the 4th attempt I was able to pass it, although I don't know why. Fortunately this were the only crashes I experienced. 2) The game is saving at fixed positions within the world. This feels very much like older games and contributes to the difficulty of the game in a annoying way. Sometimes failing in jump & run means walking to the location with the difficult situation and start all over again. This could have been made better with more apropriate save point positions directly in front of those situations.. 3) One of the genre's biggest challenges is positioning the camera. While this was done great in most situations, there are cases where the camera position makes the game harder than necessary, due to a lack of overview or difficulty to assess jumping distances/angles right. 4) Controlling the character works fine in most situations. In my opinion the game could have more mercy with minor mistakes - at the edge of cliffs the character falls sooner than I sometimes expected it. 5) Guiding through the game: at a few moments I was a bit lost, when there were no waypoints on map or I did not know how to reach it due to something else that I had to do before (but was not indicated). Overall the weaknesses sound hard, but the game is one of those very rare pieces of this genre that make the important things right. The atmosphere is great, the graphics fit well to the game and are in its own way beautiful. A story does not appear to exist at first, but somehow the game manages to let you imagine the story.

This is essentially an exploration game. There is platforming and of course some combat, but it's not the focus of the game. You are thrown into the world without any background or mission. However, early interactions will give you a rough idea of what is going on, and as you keep progressing you will find out what you are doing in that world. Nothing is spelled out though, so if you are one of those people who needs to have every little piece of lore colourfully detailed in codex entries or some such, you'll not find that here. Your imagination is stimulated because of it though, and the delightful visual style and moody background soundtrack lay out a wonderful landscape for your imagination to run wild. The level design is very good. If you like exploration, you'll want to check out every nook and cranny of the world. It's a place where you'd want to lose your way just to experience the joy or finding it back. The combat is ok. It's not bad, it's not great. You have several abilities that you can combine to defeat your enemies, but I found myself just using roll and attack for the most part, even in very hard difficulty. The game doesn't suffer from it though, since it's not a combat heavy game. The platforming sometimes feels a bit imprecise, which I think is pretty standard in 3D platformers. But this is very rarely a problem. As you progress you gain new abilities (some exploration related, others more combat oriented) that keep things fresh until the end. There is a certain Metroidvania element, in that some areas are inaccessible until you gain an ability that allows you to go past a certain obstacle. In conclusion, I have found this to be a very well rounded game. I went into it with very little information, so I didn't really know what I was getting into, and I have been very pleasantly surprised.

Aesthetically this game is strong. The stone and copper machinery look combined with the enchanting flora and fauna drew me in. I thought the "wordless" storyline would add to this to make a captivating game. But I instead found myself confused, going around in circles. It didn't feel like the game was getting more challenging, just more tedious.

Hob, as buggy as it may be, has been an endearing joy to play as Torchlight developer Runic Games steps out of their comfort zone to marry a fistful of ideas from both Ico and The Legend of Zelda. A duplicate of neither previously mentioned game, it depends on its own twist with these ideas to fulfill a cozy, laid back, atmospheric experience. An attempt to weave combat, exploration and puzzle solving has resulted in a Runic putting a strong foot forward, though at the cost of lacking refinement. Being a fan of action games, I'll focus primarily on combat. For as much as I love this game, this is where it's first obvious frays are revealed. Your base, initial kit of skills is anemic: one combo, a dodge, and a sword slam that lacks utility. Though the act of combat is smooth and tactile, there isn't much in way of depth, even after you unlock your arsenal of expanded tools and their (admittedly useful) associated skills. Power punch, shield, warping, and grappling all play a familiar, albeit limited, role. Grappling is far too situational, and enemies with metallic shields can play an impressively boring match of turtling with you. The combat is also counter intuitive those more adjusted to high APM play, so be prepaired to arbitrarily pace yourself due to high commitment animations in a game that boasts a speed cloak. Combat aside, exploration is where the fruit of their labor pays off in spades. Each new zone has atmosphere for days, punctuated by a gorgeous unified art style, with secrets unveiled through satisfying your natural curisoty, and rewarding your penchant for being observant. Naturally, this ties in with the puzzles, the primary core of Hob's general design. Unlocking the world through brain teasing, one-solution-puzzles is powerfully satisfying the first time though. However, it only serves as a test of movement optimization the second time through. This hinders experimentation and replayability, yet at the same time, it remained fun all the same.