Update Twenty-Five: 22 July 2017
Aquaria
15.9 hours, 20 of 27 achievements
tsuper review: 6/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
I have to admit - I gave up on Aquaria. I think I’m at like maybe 80% through, but trying to juggle everything, doing all the optional bosses… it’s just really not fun anymore. I made the mistake of playing it until I got sick of it. I’m a completionist by temperament, and while 95% of the time it brings me great enjoyment. That last 5%, though, can be a killer.
I’m an avid reader with a too-read list of nearly 2000 titles, so I have to be strict with what I spend time on. Usually around page 40 or 50, if I feel myself hesitating every time I pick up my book, I ask myself, ‘Do I want to see how this ends? Do I care about these characters?’ And if the answer is ‘no’, I put it down and read something else. That’s what I feel like with Aquaria.
It’s… okay. It’s kind of old, very popular for its niche, but it’s a little dated, too. I don’t even feel like writing up a summary of what the game’s premise is. Okay, you’re a fish girl who is alone and you explore different places under water to see how each of the different races who lived there died horribly. That’s it. I don’t know what exactly the genre is on this - it plays like Ori and the Blind Forest. Metroidvanias? Does this count as a Metroidvania? It’s not my preferred genre, and unlike Ori it couldn’t keep me through.
I won’t move it to ‘won’t play’ because I AM so close to the end. I’ll keep it in ‘unfinished’ and hopefully return to it someday, less frustrated and more forgiving. I just have other, more fun (for me!) games to play. I asked myself ‘Do I want to see how this ends?’ and found myself wanting it to be over just so I wouldn’t have to play it anymore. The game - and I - deserve better than that. It’s not you, it’s me.
Next up: Monthly challenge, one of five - time to spot some cute animals!
See you soon!
Does this count as a Metroidvania?
That seems to be the consensus of everyone else who’s played it so far. I haven’t played too much of it (about an hour and a half in), but it seems a bit more linear than, say, Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, so I’d classify it as an action-adventure (more like the Legend of Zelda games) rather than Metroidvania at the moment.
It’s not my preferred genre
So you bought it just for the story? If that’s what you’re looking for, then next time you consider buying a game, it might be a good idea to check some reviews and see what the consensus on the difficulty is. If people are complaining about the game being boring, then you know you won’t rage-quit and will be able to take in the story and setting more. ☺
Hi, Devon! I know you didn’t mean this, but the tone of your second paragraph kind of bugged me. I didn’t buy it for the story, and I did look at reviews. Like I said in the post - I played Ori and enjoyed it (not just for the story and visuals, though, but the gameplay was masterfully balanced) and I did give Aquaria the good ol’ college try. I finished the majority of the game and did get to take in (most of) the setting and (most of) what story there was.
I think you took a fragment of a sentence I wrote and extrapolated out into what are, for me, pretty unflattering conclusions. I know you weren’t aiming to do that, so I hope in the future you do more asking and less assuming. Thanks, man.
Ah, sorry, though I’m curious: if you don’t like the game’s genre (aka the game-play), why did you buy the game?
‘Not preferring’ a genre doesn’t mean I don’t like it, it means that it’s pretty much in the middle of the pack. I don’t like RTS games or racing games, period. I don’t LIKE roguelikes… but I got a good couple of dozens of hours of enjoyment out of the Binding of Isaac*. I’m not a fan of shooters, but I love Half-Life 2 to death and enjoyed BioShock 1 and 2 very much. And, like I said, I really liked Ori and the Blind Forest.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe a game’s genre is absolute, especially if I’ve heard multiple times how much it helped push/grow the genre. I feel that way about books, movies, music, television - if something is Great, then that greatness is worth getting my feet wet (lol!) in a genre I might not normally enjoy. Most of the time it works out and I get a fresh experience; I get to try on a new genre’s conventions and conceits. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Also the game was like a buck fifty in the sale and I had promised a friend a LONG TIME AGO to give it a try. If there’s ever a time to try a game you’re not sure you’d like, that’d be it.
*please tell me this is a roguelike. I also don’t like genres bc a lot of the time I can’t - friggin - tell which genre they’re in.
Okay, I understand now.
As for figuring out what genre a game is, try to ask yourself “What is the game’s focus? What is it making me do the most, and where does the game’s challenge come from?” If the game has well-indicated, fixed mechanics, an obvious goal, and focuses on making you think about how to use the mechanics to reach the goal, then it’s a puzzle game. If the game’s challenge lies in jumping across platforms with levels populated by enemies with simplistic AI, then it’s a platformer. If the game has an overworld where you travel to dungeons that have fixed level design and you fight monsters and solve the occasional puzzle, chances are it’s an action-adventure. If it’s like an action adventure but there is no overworld, transitions between dungeons are instantaneous, and the dungeon designs are randomized (meaning the focus is more on fighting monsters than navigating the dungeon itself), then it’s a roguelike. If the game doesn’t really have an overworld, but instead has multiple unique areas that have multiple interconnecting branching paths and secrets (and usually has platforming mechanics), then it’s a Metroidvania. If the game doesn’t really have anything challenging about it and instead drops you in a random area with little to no explanation about how it works with the focus being on exploration and discovery, then it’s an adventure game (although adventure games can disguise themselves as other genres: Antichamber tries to pass itself off as a puzzle game, and Never Alone uses platforming mechanics. However, they’re both adventure games since Antichamber doesn’t have a clear goal and gives no explanation about how its mechanics work (or even any hints about it until after you’ve “solved” the “puzzle”), and Never Alone has no challenging jumps and very empty levels).
Hopefully, that will help you with figuring out what genre a game is in (as well as see through lies when a game tries to pass itself off as a genre it isn’t).
I ragequit at the last boss and threw it into “won’t play”, while the game was enjoyable in some ways it was ruined for me with these stupid boss fights.
Well sometimes the best thing to do, is to accept that a game is not the right thing to play. In that sense: Nicely done. I’m always struggling with abandoning a game but sometimes it’s the only sensible thing to do really :)
Although I really was hoping for a different game update :D
Good luck with your challenge games!
And I didn’t pick for you, not because I tried to avoid you, but because I thought I can’t jump at everything your doing ;) :D
Hope you got some nice games picked for you! :)
Happy challenge me killing! :)
Yeah, I feel you. There’s this weird sense of, like… duty? that I get when doing something. That thing I was taught when I was young of ‘If you start something, you have to finish it’ shouldn’t really apply for something that’s not, I dunno, literally your job or raising a child. Everything else, the question should be ‘Am I getting something out of this?’
Hahahaha!! You want me to finish the daddies? I’ll keep working on it today, I promise!
And thank you. No worries, I don’t think that at all. It’s very nice having someone look out for me c;
How ‘bout this - you pick my games for me next time, and I’ll pick yours. What do you say?
Yep. Totally! Gamers duty! Have to play a game and get the most of it out of it! Even if it’s no longer fun.
Nononono, we are playing for fun. So sometimes… ;) :D
Aw, yes! I want to hear about them daddies! :] <3
But don’t force yourself. It’s still fun, remember? :D :*
Yes! I love it! Next month then? It’s a challenge me date? ;)
I won’t force myself, I promise. I am indeed enjoying the daddies.
And yes! a challenge me date indeed c;
Aquaria’s been in my backlog for years… thankfully I don’t think I’m dissuaded enough by your post to axe it from the potentials, but yeah… I believe it was in the very first Humble Indie Bundle, and I actually owned it from a Steam sale before then. I think I even started to play it when I had bought it, but it never called to me strongly enough for me to continue, especially when the whole bundle thing was something new and wonderful and they had lots of other really great games in them. Perhaps it should have been a shorter game, but that was probably a riskier thing to do back when it was released.
Yeah, so much of this was, like, ‘I can see the seeds of greatness here, this obviously was groundbreaking when it came out, other, newer games have improved upon this format, in the end it’s not for me’.
I super wouldn’t recommend axing it without playing - I did like most of the game, just not enough to struggle through the finish - but it also was something I really waffled with playing, too. This idea of a ‘call to play’ is something I really like, godprobe.