eytanz
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2708
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged
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Subterra mini-review (+2)
Well, I've been playing subterra for a few days (well, two, actually), and I'm pretty much addicted. But at the same time I feel there's a lot of room for improvement. So, I thought I'd post a mini-review now so I can look at it later and see if I still agree.
As is my nature, I'm going to be very brief on the things I like and lengthy on the things I dislike. That's not proportional to how I feel about the game - it's a great game, and I love it. I just wish... Well, you'll see.
The good:
- The puzzles, at least those in the main level set (I haven't seen the rest yet), are really excellent.
- The easy/hard mode duality adds a ton of replay value.
- As do all the secrets. Together, there two features are what really sold me on the game.
The bad:
- Too much emphasis on timing in a lot of the puzzles, in my opinion. Even early on, there are a lot of puzzles that are far more taxing on the reflexes than they are on the brain. That's not necessarily bad, but it's not where my taste lies.
- Apparently, no thought was applied at all to a learning curve regarding introducing game elements. Yes, I know this is part of the genre, and the tutorial is much appreciated, but already by the sixth or seventh level you need to remember a lot of different game elements with rather idiosyncratic behavior. Which brings me to:
- A lot of totally arbitrary, non-intuitive relations between objects. Why do eggs not break when they fall? Why do safes contain eggs, for that matter? Why do skulls fire at rubies but not at emeralds? I realize that this is a huge part of the game, but like in other places, it looks like there was no design plan. More on this later.
- The interface is irritating - it's not bad, it's just not good. Having to pause to scroll is annoying, the scrolling itself is hard to control, the key configuration is pretty bizzare (to be honest, I forget if it's reconfigurable, but even if it is this is an odd default).
The Ugly:
- The graphics. Oh my god, the graphics. Now, I'm not talking graphic quality. I think each individual tile is fine. Some of them really look cool in isolation. But they don't fit together. There's a mix of different styles, there's no thought for being able to easily identify objects, and even less thought to aesthetics, especially color combinations. Some objects are far too similar (water and ice). Nearly every object is drawn from a different perspective (compare, for example, fire, the hero, crates, ice, and skulls).
Overall:
If Subterra was a beta version, I'd be hugely excited at its potential. For a game that's been around for a while, I'm mostly disappointed at how it squandered said potential. This could have been one of the top puzzles games out there, but a lot of barriers have been erected for no good reason just to prevent players from enjoying it. Steamlining the interface would be nice, but what would be really good would be if someone went, took the list of object behaviors for given, and went around figuring out new names and personalities for the objects that would make their behavior more intuitive, and make it look like they belong together instead of being thrown together haphazzardly. Similarly, the graphics need a major overhaul - again, not in terms of quality, but in terms of cohesiveness.
A few more words: rereading this it does seem like I was very negative. Despite my disclaimer in the beginning, that's not entirely what I want. So let me just say explicitly - what Subterra does right, it does very very right. It's just that it doesn't do everything right.
[Edited by eytanz at Local Time:05-18-2005 at 12:09 PM]
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