Mable & The Wood

The first screen you see is one telling you the usage of a controller is recommended. That's not really true. This game was not envisioned to be played with a mouse and keyboard. You need one. Everything, from the options menu to the keyboard bindings shows how not for a mouse and keyboard this game was made. The keyboard controls options are woefully inadequate and for some of us controllers just aren't an option. I never liked controllers while I was on Windows, and now that I'm using Linux controllers are completely out of the question. More often then not they are broken. That leaves me with only one option, mouse and keyboard - this game was not meant to be played that way. Hell, based on how the menu looks and behaves I'm not certain the game was ever really intended for computers in the first place - probably just released on pc as a result of the common Windows/Xbox architecture and the engine's support for the platform. I really don't know what else to say, this is just an incredibly lazy console port. I'm the kind of person that thinks skyrim is unplayable - on the PC - without the SkyUI mod. If you usually only play your games with a controller this might be more to your liking but for me this is a bust.

I am unable to get the game to run on any of my Windows computers, old or new. The game has been abandoned for years, and it's unlikely the problem will be ever fixed, so if the game is not on sale for pennies, I highly discourage any potential buyers to pay full price or at least don't be like me and only get to the game more than 30 days after purchase, so you can ask for a refund.

This game is old. Even when it was released, it was not good

I am only 3 bosses into the game and I am thoroughly enjoyoing myself. The enemies are challenging without being too hard for my slower reflexes, and while the story is somewhat surface level right now, it would not kill the game if it never got deeper. I have been recommending this game to my friends and coworkers.

This has some interesting spins on the usual mixture of combat and platforming, but it grows somewhat stale over the course of the game. Initially you won't directly attack enemies, and instead have a sword that is "tethered" to your character. You hook it into a surface and can then move around for a limited amount. When you pull the sword towards you it will slice up anything that is inbetween. This is your attack and how you platform as well, since your character can't jump at all. Eventually you get different forms that change how these elements work, but essentially they're all twisted versions of standard game-play mechanics. For a little while it makes for some interesting game-play, as it subverts how you would normally approach things. But in the end you just do the same stuff you would in a title with more conventional controls, only now it's a bit more fiddly to do anything. There's the odd moment where this approach feels quite nifty, but it also means that boss-battles are quite simplistic, as it doesn't seem to really fit with providing adrenaline packed challenges. Either that or they just didn't do a very good job with them. Sometimes it's a pretty standard arrangement of traps and set-pieces in the level design that occassionally feel like they don't suit this "unique" control scheme, whereas sometimes it works. There's the odd sloppily done bit with bugs and glitches that lessens it overall, and the bland graphics aren't made up for by the pleasant music. It just about remains playable and engaging, but just because it does things differently doesn't mean that its any better than a conventional example of the genre. And in many ways this is still pretty average, albeit not a bad game overall.