The premise revolves around your character having crash landed on a world long forgotten called Illuna. At first there is a really dark, lonely vibe to your character's surroundings as you focus on building shelters and research new technologies in hope you can survive. However, before long the tension ratchets up as you find yourself in need of weapons to help defend yourself on a world you are most certainly not alone on.
The visual style really appealed to me, with lots of dark tones and a shadowy, ever-threatening world. The sound effects and music are alright, but they do not hold up their end of the bargain nearly as well. They get the job done, but never struck me as terribly memorable. It is unfortunate, because better music could have made the game a bit more suspenseful.
The weapon crafting and research felt very simple, and never greatly appealed to me. Thankfully the mechanics behind the construction worked pretty well, but the exploration and story feel very thin and do very little to motivate continued progress. Darkout feels like it has some good ideas at work here, but that it could have used a bit more time getting polished up. A more engaging story and a cleaner interface would have done wonders for making it more appealing to gamers, who might enjoy the building while it lasts.
That being said, I am not sure there is enough standout content beyond that to entice most gamers into investing heavily into Darkout. Not a bad game by any means, but it takes a lot of time to get into and the payoff is only average in the end. Darkout makes for an interesting distraction, but it did not hold my interest as long as I hoped.
6 out of 10
I remember seeing a lot about this one before/at its release, but I didn't pick it up myself.
ReplyDeleteOn this though, "You know those games that get great reviews, and look like you should really enjoy them because they seem to be well made games with an entertaining theme? We all see them from time to time, and I am sure all of us eventually find one or two that seem like they should just be a lot of fun, and yet for some inexplicable reason, just do not resonate the way you had hoped and thought they would."
Super Mario Galaxy it is for me. It just didn't "click". I beat it, thought it was interesting (not bad by any means), but I didn't enjoy it as much as something like New Super Mario Bros. Wii at the time, or even Super Mario 64 on the Virtual Console.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii was completed 100% (well, whatever getting EVERYTHING was...not sure if it's actually more than 100% like in DKCR). But once I beat Super Mario Galaxy, I just wasn't that interested in going back to beat it again. I still own it, but didn't even put Super Mario Galaxy 2 on my "Wish List" because the first one didn't really impress me that much.
Thanks for dropping by!
ReplyDeleteYou know, Galaxy was one that also felt like that to me. I played it at some of the demo stations at stores, and I could appreciate that it was a well-made game, but the 3D Mario titles just never appealed to me the way the 2D ones. I'm sure it just comes down to tastes, and that's exactly how this one felt to me too. I know Joe Danger is well-made and people like it, I just never found myself compelled to spend a lot of time on it. It was easy to play something else instead.