Everything in this game shows its small budget, and yet I totally enjoyed it and think this kind of game is essential. Playing A Plague Tale reminded me a lot of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, another AA game I deeply liked, and of Terminator Resistance, which I'm really eager to play. It's gorgeous, sound design and music are excellent, gameplay is a bit simple (puzzle adventure mixed with stealth at the beginning, and lethal stealth at the end), and it's basically a 10 hours corridor. I have rarely or maybe never played a game that recreates Middle Age so well, either in character or world design. And those rats… It feels like those linear story driven solo games we had a lot in the early 00's, and that sadly disapeared with the X360/PS3 generation. Maybe that's why I liked this game so much, considering I was a teenager at that time, and I played a lot of these solo adventures.
Nothing bad to say about Tetrobot and Co. You will notice first that the game is really gorgeous, with a super clean and cute 2D. Then it is pretty easy to play (meaning that you never get confused with controls). Then the puzzles.... It is impressive how far the developers have gone in mind blowing situations with a concept that looks simple. You absorb and throw blocks to solve puzzles, each block has its own properties (just like Blocks That Matter). Then you just move on the screen the same way as a point & click game (forgetting all controls issues in BTM), hopefully until the level's exit, fortunately with the three bonus blocks of each level. The entire game is based on that concept, and yes it's enough to produce a quiet long game. So in the end, it's gorgeous, it's clever, it's hard at some point, it's also cute and funny. It's a must buy for all puzzle-lovers, and a highly recommended game for everyone else.
The game alternates two gameplays: human and robot. Human levels are quiet frustrating. The weapons look and sound really good. But the enemies are sometimes blind, sometimes seeing through walls and shoot you even if the door is not completely open. And of course, it's a deadly shot. As I said on the title, you have no reload button. But the weapons do have magazines, which means that you will run out of ammo in front of an ennemy really often, because there's no way to know when as the game only shows you the remaining ammo in total for that weapon. Fortunately, the robots level are really better. Weapons are even more amazing than with human. You encounter more kinds of ennemy, levels are bigger. Finally it's a funny game, but not as amazing as what you could find in the same time. And graphics look old, but not in the good meaning.
