Posted on: October 17, 2025
alwbsok
Possesseur vérifiéJeux: 541 Avis: 23
Excellent, but for one thing
I remember discovering Super Ghouls & Ghosts on the Wii virtual console (the SNES was a *little* before my time), and falling in love with it. My favourite feature was the double-jump, specifically how you had no control over your trajectory once you were in the air (other than to initiate the second jump). It just changed the flavour of the platforming, requiring more puzzle solving than muscle memory. It made me wonder why I hadn't seen it in more games. Fast forward several years later, Volgarr the Viking, wearing its influences on its sleeve (and store page), proudly rips off this jumping mechanic from SG&G. Indeed, playing through Volgarr often feels like playing through SG&G, but in many ways, done even better. I think the biggest, and best addition to Volgarr over SG&G is the spear. It's nice (and probably necessary) to have an unlimited ranged weapon, but using it for makeshift platforms (and, on occasions, shelters) adds another extra dimension to the gameplay. I honestly found the game's design to be superb. Volgarr feels weighty, but the platforming is razor sharp. The levels feel meticulously crafted, with great attention paid to smoothing out the game's daunting difficulty curve. And just when you feel like you've gotten a grip on everything that the level (and its various enemies and traps) could possibly show you, you'll find a boss, or a new section, complete with new mechanics for you to wrap your head around. Volgarr also pinches another mechanic from SG&G: how health works. In SG&G, the main character, Arthur, is clad in steel armour. If you take a hit, you lose your armour, and instead wander around in your underwear. If you open a chest, you can recover your armour, or if you already have armour, upgrade it (up to twice). Upgraded armour still shatters in a single hit, but gives you damage buffs, giving you extra incentive not to get hit. Volgarr the Viking is slightly more forgiving here: Volgarr still gets equipment from chests, but getting hit usually only removes your most recent acquisition. You don't fall to the bottom of the health pole from a single hit. Still, the punishment for getting hit feels severe. In other hard games, I have been tempted to look for a way through levels that is "good enough", so that you only get hit a manageable number of times. Volgarr's health system is enough to dissuade me from doing that. If I can't see a way to get through without getting hit once, then I know that I need to try something different. Now, as positive as I have been about this game, it does take something else from SG&G, which really should have been left in the past: your journey resets when you exit the game. This wasn't an issue playing SG&G on the Wii, since you could resume virtual console games from where you left them (and use save states, if you wanted). It would have been an issue playing it on the SNES, and it is an issue playing Volgarr now. The game then proceeds to undercut this, once you finish a level (involving getting through its two stages and beating its boss). It insists that it isn't saving your progress, but it will permit you to skip a level that you've previously beat when next you open the game. It then tells you that it will lock you out of the best ending if you do skip a level. The subtext is very clear: quitting is tolerated under great sufferance. If you can't complete Volgarr in a single session, then you can't really complete Volgarr. While this small concession is better than nothing, progress in Volgarr is hard-won. It can take many, many hours to get yourself to the next checkpoint, and getting to a new level can take the better part of a day. Just getting through an entire level is a large time and energy commitment. If you wanted to do anything else with your weekend (e.g. be a parent), you're not going to be able to do anything with Volgarr other than dabble at the beginning of the game. This just strikes me as bad design, and it sticks out all the more grafted, as it is, to such a painstakingly well designed game. Allowing players to exit out and return to where they left, even if it's just at the most recent checkpoint, would not sabotage the difficulty in any way, and would make Volgarr more accessible by orders of magnitude. I'm left with a game that I would love to recommend to more people, but I honestly just can't. Anyone who has something more to their lives other than gaming will find this restriction prohibitive. You can, of course, simply leave the game running in the background, and refuse to restart your computer. But why waste the CPU cycles? Why waste the power (or the carbon)? Why let it drain the performance of other game? Somehow, the fact that this restriction can be side-stepped makes its presence more offensive; the developers could have just implemented a simple save-on-exit system and made this game so much more enjoyable. It's all a little tragic. There is so much to love about Volgarr. I love its level design. I love the enemies and how they're used. I love the tightness of the platforming. I love the breadth of tools you have at your disposal to overcome the game's many challenges. But, it may just be another game that I love, but I will never finish.
Trouvez-vous ce commentaire utile ?
