October Assassination #3 (SG Win / PoP Pick)

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The Adventure Pals was a game that I enjoyed and was delighted by …. for the first 8 of the 9 hours it took me to beat it.

It is a game that hits on that saturday morning cartoon nostalgia. The artstyle, graphics, animation, effects, humor, sounds, everything is crafted towards a very specific vision, and damn, it pays off. It's a great game to look at, and it's one of these games I know will never look dated, because it's a timeless art direction. It's more like Adventure Time than some Adventure Time games hahahaha

The gameplay is also nice, with some caveats. It's mostly an action platformer, with many segments of jumping and dodging intespersed with combat segments. The combat is … bad. It's just too messy and hectic, and the screen frequently is too cluttered to allow for satisfying encounters. It reminded me a lot of Guacamelee, which in my book is not a compliment. Each biome has five levels, each level has five stages, and each stage has a hidden collectible that is generally easy and fun to hunt for. You have consumables that can change the tide of a battle and a score based on how fast and thorough you were during your exploration, and many other hidden collectables through the world and the side quests and the arenas.

And if that was the whole game, I would say it's a charming game that starts strong and loses momentum until it's finally over with a little steam left. But ….

Now, after reading all of that you might be wondering -- geez, how do you justify a thumbs down? Well, two factors were decisive. The first was a softlocking game bug I encountered in the fourth world, Crablantis. I beat the first level, and then another level unlocked. Unbeknownst to me, that was the third level, and once I beat it, the game was softlocked since I hadn't beaten the second level (it was never enabled) and could not proceed further. This game was released near a decade ago and I'm not the only person that experienced the bug, so the fact it wasn't fixed yet indicates to me it will never be fixed. And that's a shame, because that softlock prevented not only progress, but also achieving a side-quest that I fought for (the Crystal Skull near Stoney Head).

The second was compounded by the first. If everything has been fine in terms of softlocking bugs, I probably wouldn't have complained about the pace dying near the end of the game. But when I finally got softlocked I realized how repetitive the game had become. And while the gameplay loop is fine at first, I realized it hadn't improved much for the previous 10 hours, and I suddenly lost all the urge to beat it.

And that's such a shame, because it's not everyday you find these sweet works of passion. But at the same time, our time and money is limited, and the small things that are bothersome in this game are bothersome enough to prevent a recommendation.