Archive: 1 post

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The last level I explored from Walter-Kovacs was the amazingly brilliant and amazingly challenging "Which Way is Up?", in which the entire level rotates in 90 degree intervals whenever you make it to the end of a hallway or path. I found the level to be quite ingenious from both a mechanical standpoint and good use of organization. Being that this level also comes from the same bold creator, I was looking forward to another mechanical wonder to behold and plunge headfirst straight towards. Ultimately what I ended up with was a tad underwhelming but "Keep Up!" is still absolutely well done for everything it's trying to do. The object behind KU is that you spawn on a platform before a basic series of jumping hazards (mostly holes) and need to proceed forward. This sounds basic enough but there's a little twist: the camera is both fixed in position and is also constantly moving ahead. As such, the true goal of the stage is to literally "keep up" with the moving camera, progressing through the stage as you can see it and trying not to fall too far behind or move too far forward. Creating this scenario takes advantage of a really old yet effective challenge for the player by giving them a fair amount of restrictions in an otherwise normal setting. By limiting your available movement and your ability to see whatever you want, the challenge is based ultimately about patience and composure. Mechanically, I don't think it's anywhere nearly as impressive as Which Way is Up?, but that's a little unfair; Keep Up! is still fairly impressive on it's own merits and it can be praised for creating the same sort of effective level making scenario with a lot less work attached. The actual platforming segments strike me as a bit odd. For the majority of the level, there's both a high and low path with the low path being more dangerous and the high path being full of points and a greater amount of holes leading one way towards the lower path. It seems the goal is to try staying on the upper path as long as you're able to get the maximum amount of points, and the overall risk of falling off the higher path is relatively light. The reason why this is fine is due to the higher path being much harder to navigate than the lower path and when you fall to the lower path there's no way back up. The challenge of the level becomes personal at this point, you become driven to stay on the upper path as long as your ability allows. I completely approve. Now I mention challenge a lot for this level, but ironically it's really easy. Most of the weight in difficulty is taken away with the inclusion of an infinite life checkpoint that follows you around, and for the sake of preventing stupid cheap deaths having sackboy respawn causes a small disappearing platform to form under you for about 3 seconds. On top of that, the actual difficulty of the level is fairly easy as the number of overall threats here is absolutely minimal. I guess the creator was banking on the difficulty being produced by the forced camera. So where does challenge come in? Well, as I've mentioned before there's a large difference between a level being challenging and being difficult. Being difficult just means it's hard, and it will either come off as being too frustrating to bother with or a challenge worth striving to beat. Being challenging however says nothing about the level's difficulty necessarily (though it will usually be hard), but it definitely creates a scenario in which the player strives to achieve something personal, whether it be beating the level, getting a high score, or maybe beating the level as fast as possible. KU may not be difficult at all, but I certainly find it challenging to a degree. Finally, a little shoutout to the music selection. I've heard The Wilderness soundtrack before in levels, mostly because players seem to think it's this crazy epic soundtrack, but here I found it used a bit more appropriately. What Walter created here was a level that slowly progresses forward, and the further in you go the more the song's elements come into view...err, play. I'm really feeling this dramatic buildup that carries me across the whole level, listening to ever increasing music to match the ever increasing difficulty and to embrace the challenges ahead, leading all the way to the end. Certainly there are other songs he could've chosen here, but what's the point ultimately? I'd say that when you put music into your stage there needs to be a reason for it to be included. Here, I'd say it was there for the sake of setting and generating mood, and it did so with great panache. Final Score: 8.0 / 10 My only real gripes are as follows: Short, Unimpressive visuals, Fairly easy, No sense of danger. The rest of the level, both conceptually and executed, reminded me quite fondly of old NES games where speed and skill were of the essence. Fantastic level. On a side note, I know I'm falling behind here. I'm gonna really push to get 2 reviews done tonight.

2011-01-10 17:32:00 Author: Shining Aquas Posts: 353

Posts: 1077139    Threads: 69970    Members: 9661    Archive-Date: 2019-01-19

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