The Good: * Dialogue and voice acting, while clumsy, can be quite entertaining * Visual design and character design are great * Levels and puzzles are well-designed, clever, and challenging The Bad: * Controls are imprecise and movement is VERY floaty * Intro sequence is far too long for this kind of fast-paced game imo * Music is lacklustre and forgettable My biggest gripe is the movement and controls - jumping and running feel very floaty, as though the character has no weight. The character will hold onto ledges and climb up them if you hold forward, but it all feels strange and unweildy. Trying to pull off a precise jump while the camera ris otating due to the gravity shift mechanic is like pulling teeth. I will be keeping an eye out for updates and future games from this dev, as I like their visual style and goofy dialogue. However, the controls are frustrating enough in Blackhole that I would advise avoiding it unless you are a hardcore puzzle platformer fan.
I've put 131 hours into M&B: Warband according to Steam - one of my top five games of all time. In Warband, you control the leader of a warband who gathers followers, trains and equips them, and clashes with other warbands on a massive map. You join one of the factions and prove yourself by aiding the nobility and helping defend the kingdom. You can raze enemy towns, rescue captured maidens, track down deserters, take control of your own castle, even eventually become the king! The AI characters all move around realistically - defending their castle, joining their king in war, attending jousting tournaments, secretly visiting lovers, trading, patrolling, and chasing bandits. You move around the open world and interact with these characters - either fighting, talking, or trading. The combat is real-time, third-person combat. You lead the charge, but you can issue orders to your troops - tell the archers to stay on the high ground while your cavalry flank the enemy, for example. The combat is much more realistic than most games - you have to aim your attacks, arrows drop after long distances, cavalry will run you down with their horse. It's challenging and intense and rewarding. The game doesn't hold your hand - quests are generally short and, to be fair, pretty repetitive at times. You have to carve your own path - do you train your warband into an elite force and hunt down bandits? Do you suck up to the king in the hope that he awards you a fief of your own? Do you sneak into a castle to rescue a captured nobleman and fight the guards yourself? it's up to you!
GOOD: Visual design is very charming. Music and sound are quite nice. Game is very forgiving when you make mistakes. BAD: Platforming controls are clumsy. Animations are too long. Levels don't feel well-designed. Cinematics run at a very low FPS. I love the design of the characters and the world, it looks amazing. The character are very cute and expressive. Unfortunately, the actual platforming gameplay really lets this game down. It is clearly inspired heavily by Abe's Odyssey, but it lacks the fluidity of the Abe games. The climbing animation takes far too long and can often cause you to die and have to restart the area. Turning around slows you right down, causing you to miss jumps that you would expect to land. The movement in general feels very clumsy and halting and slow - not something I would hope to see in a 2D platformer, especially when there are moving levels and platforms that require constant motion. Some of the levels feel poorly designed. Sometimes it is unclear which parts of the level are interactible and which parts are the background. In other parts there are too many enemies, who can kill you instantly and cause you to restart the area. For example, the area that introduces the stealth mechanic has you hiding in shadows while 3 separate enemies patrol the same stretch of corridor - in my case, the enemy movements synced up so that they were always looking in my direction and I had to stand in the same spot for 30 seconds to wait for their patrols to unsync again before I could progress. The cinematics between areas especially annoy me. FRAPS tells me the game is rendering at 60fps but the cinematics look like they're running at 12fps. Not sure if this is a bug or as intended, but it looks awful. Overall I commend the developers for their work but unfortunately I would not recommend this game.
