Ori and the Blind Forest was developed by Moon Studios, an indie game studios that was actually picked up by Microsoft Studios as a First Party Developer. This would basically mean that Microsoft would be publishing their game in 2015, which is a big deal, I mean it’s Microsoft, come on.

So this game took 4 years to make, and launched very, very successfully in 2015. Fun fact, the team at Moon Studios met in person for the first time when the trailer for their first game was showcased at the 2014 E3. Apparently, Moon Studios works as a virtual studio, meaning that they don’t rent an office, and that they hire people from all over the place, which is pretty cool honestly!

This might not seem relevant to the review, but I just wanted to share a bit of their history as I find it quite interesting. But let’s talk about the game, yeah?

So, Ori and the Blind Forest, a game that came out in 2015, developed by Moon Studios, is essentially a metroidvania/adventure game, with a gorgeous artstyle and soundtrack, tight gameplay and a truly heart-warming story that will most definitely tug at your heartstrings a few times.

In this game, you play as Ori, a child of the Spirit Tree, a child of light, who, on an unfortunate stormy night, was swept away from the Tree as a baby. Fortunately for him, he was found and raised by a creature called Naru, who is basically his adoptive mother.

However Ori was not in his true place, and so the Spirit Tree held a ceremony in an attempt to call Ori back home. This angered the owl Kuro, and in her murderous rage, she ripped out the light from the Spirit Tree and plunged the entire forest of Nibel into darkness.

And so it’s up to Ori to retrieve the light and journey across Nibel to rekindle the three elements and save the Forest.

That is essentially the plot of the game. Now, interestingly enough, Ori’s story is actually not that complex. What I mean by that is that it’s not a really deep plot that branches out into various subplots. It’s actually a very simplistic story: you need to save the forest and escape the big scary owl, and you make a few friends along the way. And that’s it, really.

But it works really, really well. This game keeps its storytelling relatively simple, and yet it manages to make you love all the characters you meet, and you will definitely choke up a bit towards the end. I mean, come on, how can you NOT like this little bundle of cuteness?

And I think this proves that you really don’t need an overly complicated plot with a thousand subplots, to make things interesting. Don’t get me wrong, I adore stories where there’s loads of interesting twists and characters, but this game shows that it isn’t necessary. Of course, it does depend on what kind of game you’re making. I’d say that if you’re trying to make a deep RPG, then yeah, a deep and complex narrative will most likely fit that format better (if done well, of course).

But it’s fascinating how games like Ori and Hollow Knight manage to make you care at least a bit about their character. I’m using Hollow Knight as an example here because, while there is a story in that game, it’s not a very obvious one, and unless you’re a genius, or you’ve read through the wiki, you won’t really know what’s going on. And the character of the Knight is not one you’d relate to normally, I mean he’s devoid of emotion and humanity… or is he?

No but really, I don’t mean to say that Hollow Knight does not have a story, it does. But if you don’t read up about it, you won’t understand it, but even without that, there’s something likeable about the Knight, maybe it’s because he’s also cute. But he’s got a bit of sad side to him, as well, and over time you do grow fond of this little creature.

Anyway, all that to say that while Ori’s story is not the most complex, it still delivers really well and tells just a really lovely story.

Now when it comes to its gameplay, Ori and the Blind Forest is just amazing. Controls in this game are just so tight and so responsive, the kind of thing I love to see in a proper metroidvania. Everything just feels good, and I really don’t have anything bad to say about it. In terms of difficulty, well, this game can be really brutal, and I mean that. Don’t let the cuteness fool you, Hard difficulty can be VERY hard, I speak from experience here. I did the let’s play on hard mode, and god damn, I died so many times. I think I finished my playthrough with around 200 deaths, maybe more. I’m sure some players are probably better than me, but this is just a heads up. It’s a fun and challenging experience, though I did rage a lot, but if you just wanna an easy going playthrough, go with easy or normal difficulty I’d say.

I’ve called this game a metroidvania a few times already, and that’s because it plays like a very classic metroidvania. You’ve got a big map to explore with different areas, a bunch of collectibles and secrets to find, abilities that you find organically throughout the story that’ll eventually help you navigate the world better and discover more hidden areas, and of course, platforming. And all of this is done really well, I think! The pace of the gameplay can feel a bit slow at first, but I think that’s just normal for a game like this. However once you pick up your first abilities and start buying a few skills, this is where the fun begins, and things start to feel more fluid, and from there, it just gets better and better.

If you’ve played Hollow Knight, you’ll remember that it also started out pretty slowly. You don’t have anything except your sword, and then you get your dash, and things to get better, and so on so forth. Same thing here. I mentioned a skill tree too, and there’s a wide variety of skills to buy here, and all of them are pretty neat!

To unlock skills, you’ve gotta collect spirit light, which is gained by killing enemies or finding containers, stuff like that, pretty straightforward.

And of course, you can upgrade your health and energy bars! Energy is something you’ll be using to make save points, and for certain abilities too, so you’ll definitely need that.

That’s about it for gameplay, it’s just really enjoyable and fun, there’s loads of different areas to explore, loads of cool skills to buy and abilities to unlock that’ll really make the game feel better as you go on. I didn’t talk about enemies too much but there’s also a fair amount of those too, not as much variety though, but you’ll see the same enemies but different variants of them. So you might have fire enemies, or green vomit poison ones, stuff like that.

Another thing that still impresses me is the artstyle and soundtrack of Ori, it’s so damn good. I could spend ages just staring in awe at the beautiful environments, there’s so many different colours in the places you visit, and it just looks really gorgeous. I won’t show all of them to not spoil the surprises, but this game is just beautiful all the way.

And not just the art, but the soundtrack is beautiful too. Gareth Coker was the composer for both Ori 1 and 2, and while I haven’t heard the soundtrack for Will of the Wisps, I can definitely say that the first game’s soundtrack is one of the prettiest I’ve heard in a game. Like a lot of the game, it’s just lovely, and kinda sad, it’s so good, it really is. Gareth Coker has also done the music for Darksiders Genesis, and quite a few Minecraft albums too actually, you can check it all out on his website.

However the credit shouldn’t all go to Gareth. There are quite a few pieces of music in this game featuring a vocalist, Aeralie Brighton, and her voice adds so much to those tracks, it’s quite stunning, so hats off to her as well.

One thing I know I rarely talk about in my reviews is the performance of the game, how well it runs, etc. Usually I won’t really talk about it if the game runs really well and if I don’t run into any issues. Of course if there are a number of recurring bugs or whatever, I’ll talk about it, which I think I did for Jedi Fallen Order.

But maybe I should include it regardless, I dunno. This game ran perfectly well though, I had a crash once, and that’s it, but apart from that, no bugs at all. One thing I feel like I should mention is that the game, upon launching it, doesn’t let you select 1440p resolution. I ran into this issue myself, but there’s loads of solution to this on the internet or on steam forums, so it’s not too big of a deal.

Apart from that, there’s nothing wrong with the performance of this game, it was really smooth all the time.

Everything is just great, the gameplay is fun, the artstyle and soundtrack are gorgeous, and the story, while it isn’t the most complex narrative you’ll see, is one that will surely tug at you heartstrings.

Thanks for reading lads, you can watch this review on my channel @Belfalor on Youtube.

Go check out my review of this game @ Belfalor on Youtube. I've made a 19 minute video explaining what I love about the game and what makes it so fun.

In short, Risk of Rain 2 manages to have an incredible amount of variety in depth in its gameplay, which results in a constantly fun and fresh experience.

Multiple, different characters to unlock, over 100 items to discover and use, various maps and bosses to encounter.

This game is an absolute marvel, and on top of all that, it features an incredible soundtrack by Chris Christodolou. Add to that a gorgeous, yet simple, artstyle, and it just fits so well together.

Even if you don't like roguelikes, I'd recommend this game to anyone. I myself am not one to play many roguelike, but this is now one of my favourite games of all time. Sincerely recommend it.

Enjoy your time in Risk of Rain 2, survivor!

STORY & GAMEPLAY

Alien: Isolation takes place 15 years after the events of the first movie, and here you play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley. Quick note, for those who don’t know, Ellen Ripley is the protagonist of the first Alien movie.

So anyway, like I said, the game takes place 15 years after the first movie, and Ellen Ripley has gone missing, and her daughter has no clue where her mother could be. She finds out that the flight recorder of her mother’s ship has been discovered and is aboard the Sevastopol station, and sets off with a crew on a mission to investigate her mother’s disappearance, and hopefully find her. But the mission does not go as planned....

So, funnily enough, I thought the weakest aspect of this game was its story. I do think the foundation for it is pretty good and had a lot of potential, but they really could’ve improved a lot on it. When you come up with a story like this, a daughter trying to find her mother she hasn’t seen for years, you’ve got A LOT of potential to do something really memorable, and make the player really care about Amanda and her situation.

I mean, not seeing your mother for 15 years is pretty rough, and frankly Amanda didn’t always seem that bothered. Sure, she was also fighting for her life, but I just feel like the main aspect of the story was completely ignored and instead they just chose to focus primarily on the Alien. And don’t get me wrong here, I did enjoy the game, and I’ll talk about the gameplay later, but I think they really missed a great opportunity with the story here.

I found there wasn’t many sequences in the game that advanced the mother-daughter story much, only a few parts and cutscenes, and even then, Amanda just didn’t seem to be responsive. I’ll give you an example, without spoilers of course.

At one point in the game, Amanda finds something concerning her mother, and it’s a relatively big moment as it advances that aspect of the story quite a bit. I won’t say what it is of course, but Amanda’s reaction to is just “Oh God.”

Like, what? Amanda, you haven’t seen your MOTHER for 15 years, and when you finally find out something significant about what happened to her, all you say is “Oh God.” I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s a pretty weird reaction for her daughter to have.

You could argue they weren’t very close, but if you watch the movies, it becomes clear that they were, I won’t say why exactly for risk of spoiling the movies.
Anyway, look, I could go on about this, but all I’m saying is I think there was a missed opportunity for a great story here.

However, the horror-aspect of this game is fantastic, and the game does deserve a lot of praise for this. First off, they really chose the best franchise to set a horror game in. I mean, Alien, hell yeah man! Creepy, abandoned station with a lethal, unkillable creature on board constantly hunting you? Hell yeah!

Like I said, the game is really mainly focused on you trying to escape the station and possibly get rid of the Alien, and it’s perfectly executed. The game’s atmosphere is constantly tense and always has you on edge, you never know when something might jump out at you, and by the way, enemies aren’t limited to the Alien here. We got androids and humans too, so it’s pretty varied. And the androids are creepy as hell, really, they’re really well done.

But like I was saying, the game’s atmosphere is just great. Constantly eerie and creepy, it’s just great, yeah. And the Alien. Ohhh man, the Alien is one scary dude. One minute you could be walking peacefully, and if you make even one significant sound, it might just jump out of the downs and run at you and bite your face off with his mouth member. Seriously.

I think it’s important to talk a bit about how the Alien was constructed, too. I won’t go into a lot of details cause it’s a bit long to explain, but essentially, they gave the Alien its own AI. It’s driven by sensors and behaviours that help it hunt you, the player, down, and different factors also influence where it’ll look for you and such. But anyway, I won’t go too deep in details for this, as there’s a lot of info, but it makes the Alien seem like a real, intelligent life form hunting you down, and it’s great.

So, in short, this aspect of the game, the main aspect of the game when you think about it, is really well done. The survival horror aspect is really done in a great way here, mixing both a great atmosphere that sets the vibe perfectly and an actual Alien that wants to kill you.

To finish off this section, let’s talk about actual gameplay. The gameplay’s pretty straightforward here: you walk around the station, you find stuff, be it materials, weapons, more weapons, items, devices and upgrades to those devices. With materials you can craft things like medkits (healthpacks), EMP mines to disable androids, smoke bombs, lures, etc, you get the idea.

So it’s pretty basic survival horror stuff, nothing too complicated, very easy to pick up, you don’t have to overthink anything. However, I did think some items were just a bit.. Useless, I guess.

Well, maybe I shouldn’t say useless, it’s just that there’s a lot of items that I never used. I used mainly lures and smoke bombs as I found they were the most useful, but for example the game lets you make traps as well, or place items as traps, but I just never found any use for it since you can’t really predict the Alien’s trajectory a lot of the time, same for a lot of other enemies, I thought.

Other players might have played it differently than me though, just sharing my experience with you guys. Oh, and before I finish this, I just wanna talk about the station. The Sevastopol station is pretty big, and has quite a lot of areas, some which you’ll eventually discover while progressing, but by the end, you’re able to revisit a lot of these areas and open doors you couldn’t before, etc.

Personally, I didn’t really feel like re-exploring areas much. I explored areas I was in at the time, but I didn’t feel like I had much of an incentive to go back somewhere, simply for a document or audio log, or materials I could find anywhere else, so that’s something else to keep in mind.

So, overall, pretty weak story I thought, and I’ll say it one last time, I think it’s a shame they didn’t focus more on this as they could’ve made something really touching and memorable. On the bright side, the horror aspect of the game is amazing, the game does a great job at keeping you on edge and before you know it, you’ll have reached peak paranoia.

Alongside that is pretty smooth gameplay, featuring crafting, hiding in small boxes and most definitely losing your mind, eventually. For the crafting, I found there a bit too many choices, many of which I rarely used.

Oh, and before I finish this section, I just wanna talk a teeny bit about the DLCs, because yeah the game does offer DLCs. On top of the base game, the game offers three new experiences: one is a set of challenge maps in which you can play as a range of characters, both from the main game and the movie, and in these maps you’ve gotta complete a set of objectives for points, and try to escape.

If you’ve played any Batman Arkham games, these challenge maps are somewhat similar to the ones that the Arkham games offer.

The other two packs are more story focused, sort of, and are pure fan service. In Crew Expendable you get to play as one of the crew members of the Nostromo, from the first Alien movie, and your goal is to lure away the Alien and trap it. In the second expansion, Last Survivor, you get to play as Ripley, and your goal in this one is to escape your ship and ultimately escape the Alien.

While these aren’t mindblowing DLCs, I do think they’re a nice addition to the game for fans who really love the movie franchise. The gameplay is the same, nothing changes, and they’re relatively short, I finished them in about 30 minutes.

Like I said, they’re mainly fan service, in my opinion, but enjoyable. It’s also worth noting that they used the actual actors from the movie to voice the characters, I thought that was pretty cool.
That wraps it up for story and gameplay, let’s move on to our next section.

VISUALS

Considering this game was released in 2014, that’s 6 years from now, this game looks pretty damn good. Textures look very clean overall, except at times when you’re in space and you see the station’s exterior, the textures are less detailed and look a bit blurrier and muddier. Character models look very clean too, I thought, the level of detail is still pretty impressive, and likewise for the Alien. The Alien’s models is really impressive, and same for its animations, how the tail moves, or how it raises its head to try and catch your scent at times.

I mentioned how the game nails the eerie-like atmosphere, and part of that is due to visuals too. Sometimes you’ll get these particles just floating around, or this thin mist slithering on the ground, and idk I thought those were nice additions and made the whole thing creepier.

There were, however, a few visual issues, bugs, here and there. They didn’t happen much, and most of them weren’t gamebreaking or anything, but others were quite noticeable. Sometimes the Alien’s head would go through the wall, or Ripley’s arm would go through the floor, I think that happened once, yeah. One of the big ones I encountered, which was kinda funny too I guess, was when I found a gas mask, and when I took it off it was just attached to my wrist, and it kept flailing around whenever Amanda’s arm came into view. Again, nothing gamebreaking, though I have seen a few clips and videos of people encountering bugs way worse than mine, such as ending up in deep space for no reason, or falling through the ground I think.

But my experience was overall bug-free.
Also some texture popping maybe here & there, but that’s really it.

The game looks fantastic for a 6 year old game, and even though some textures on the exterior of the station looked kinda meh and some bugs occurred, it was a pretty visually pleasing experience.

MUSIC & SOUND

The Main Menu Theme is the first track you hear, and it already sets the vibe for this game, frankly.. The slow, suspenseful crescendo puts me on edge every time, and just lets me know I’m likely to get absolutely petrified while I’m playing this.

More seriously, though, the soundtrack is fantastic. I mentioned earlier that this game won a BAFTA Games Award for Audio Achievement, and well deserved, too. The music contributes a LOT to creating that eerie, creepy, unsettling atmosphere on the station, and it does a great job. Each track has that same sort of structure as the main menu theme. It starts off slow, they bit by bit, gets louder and louder, and eventually just completely surrounds you, putting you even more on edge than you were before.

Music is definitely one of this game’s strongest point, if not maybe the strongest point.

Now let’s talk a bit about sound. Overall, same thing as for the music, great sound design. Just like the music, it surrounds you and immerses you in the station’s atmosphere, and once again, does a great job at it. You could be slowly sneaking your way through an area and then suddenly, in the distance, or on your left, or maybe on your right, or maybe above you, hear the Alien’s thudding footsteps. And let me tell you right now, you'll likely end up terrified once you hear that thing running towards you. There’s no escape, and all you can do is either run like a terrified hen, or roll up into foetal position and cry. Which is what I did most of the time frankly.

What happened to me a lot of the time was that some objects I walked into actually made noise, and this might sound stupid but not many games do that, or maybe they do idk. But in this game, you could into a metal cylinder and it would move and make noise, and risk you getting caught and killed by the Alien. Most of the time though it just made me jump, but the point is that a lot of effort was put into this game’s sound and music, and it really paid off. There’s a bunch of other cool sound related things, but I’ll stop there to keep the element of surprise.

The game’s music and sound is definitely one of its strongest aspects, and contributes a ton to that creepy, abandoned ship, you’re all alone and no one’s gonna save you atmosphere. The sound award was definitely well deserved.

FINAL THOUGHTS FADE IN - FADE OUT

It’s now time for me to give you all my final opinion on this game, and whether I think it’s worth a buy or not.
And yes, I do recommend this game. Not only to fans of the franchise, but also to players who love the horror genre. And look, I haven’t played that many horror games, and it may be so that there are better games out there, but this one was definitely a great horror experience.

Where it fails with its storytelling, it most definitely makes up for it with the rest. With its great sound design and music, and pretty damn good visuals, it manages to create a very convincing horror-like, eerie atmosphere and manages to envelop and immerse the player in it. The gameplay is relatively simplistic, but since the enemy you’re fighting against is unkillable, you’ll have to find ways to escape and avoid this dreaded creature before it eats up your face. And the Alien franchise was really a perfect franchise in which to set such a game.

But like I said, this game is accessible to anyone. Whether you like Alien or not, this game is worth a go for any horror lover, though naturally, a lot of Alien fans will adore this game.

To sum it all up, yes I do recommend this game, it’s a great horror game, and the setting is great. But don’t expect an amazing story worthy of the Alien franchise, as this is not what you will get. Yes, there is a story, but in my opinion it’s not that good, and the game is really more focused on its horror aspect, and it works perfectly

STORY & GAMEPLAY

You play as “the Knight”, which by the way, the game never actually tells you that, I just looked it up on the Wiki. Anyway. You play as the Knight, or “the Vessel”, as you are sometimes referred to as, and all you know is that you’ve travelled, or at least arrived in the now-derelict bug kingdom of Hallownest.

In terms of a story, the game is not linear, at all. As you go along and start progressing through the story and defeating some key bosses and finding some pieces of lore throughout the map, you’ll start to learn more and more about this world of Hallownest and its history and your purpose in it, but it’s not always obvious. I know I eventually looked up some stuff up on the wiki just because I was a bit confused as to what was going on.

I wouldn’t consider this to be a negative aspect of the game. Even without the wiki, it’s not too hard to eventually put the pieces of the story together and get a better understanding. Not every player will like this, so it’s important to keep this in mind when you’re going into this game.

As for me, I enjoyed the story, once I got it figured out. The world building that Team Cherry has done is honestly impressive, and I found it to be quite a sad story by the time I finished it. It’s worth noting that on top of all this, Team Cherry has released several DLC packs for free, which all offer something new, be it items, bosses, or even areas.

Now, while the game does have a tutorial of course and teaches you movement and combat basics, this game does everything BUT hold your hand. It doesn’t tell you where to go, what to do or how to do it. You just gotta walk around, explore and eventually do stuff. But it works, it really does.

Hollow Knight’s world, which consists of an impressive 15 areas, has a ton of things to offer, and a lot of secrets waiting to be discovered, and soon enough you’ll feel compelled to explore every nook and cranny that you can. While this may seem like an absurd amount of areas, I really didn’t get the feeling the map was too big or too overwhelming, I think it worked just fine here.

The game also offers fast travel points which you can unlock here and there, so travelling and exploring is really made fun here.

In terms of gameplay, you’re equipped with a small nail, essentially a small sword, and as you travel through this abandoned kingdom you’ll find various NPCs offering upgrades, items and such. On top of your trusty weapon, you’ll find charms, which are essentially perks you can equip. Each charm requires a certain number of charm notches, which you can also find and purchase throughout the world. I won’t go too too in depth here so as not to spoil the game.

As for bosses, the game has an impressive range of different ones, most of which will also have a unique score for their fight. Each fight is different and will be at least a bit challenging for any player. I’ve seen some people call this game almost souls-like, and that does have some truth in it. The bosses will each have different attack patterns and moves and, just like in Dark Souls, you’ll have to dodge and counter them as best you can.

Likewise for enemies, by the way. Each area has it’s own unique set of enemies, each with different attacks. The game rarely felt repetitive for me, there was always something new to do.

Lastly, the controls. Hollow Knight’s controls are honestly some of the best in any platformer game I’ve experienced. They’re very tight controls, and once you’re comfortable with them, you can pull of some really sick platforming stuff. Most importantly, too, they feel smooth and easy to pick up. I mean, when you think about it, the game doesn’t have that many controls, but it offers a ton of different mechanics.

Overall, gameplay is fantastic, truly. Tight controls, diverse areas, enemies and bosses make for a very fun but challenging experience. I never experienced any bugs, game crashes and the game ran very smoothly on my PC.

As for the story, it won’t be for everyone. You will eventually figure it out, but some might not be interested or might find it hard to follow.

VISUALS & WORLDBUILDING

For this part of the game, I really have no complaints whatsoever.

This is without a doubt one of the prettiest games I’ve played, really, in terms of its artstyle. The art is just so damn pretty, I don’t know how else to put it, it’s just beautiful. Each area looks different, except maybe one exception, and each one offers different colours and environments.

You can take a stroll in an empty City where rain endlessly falls, or step into lush forest like areas, or perhaps even venture to the depths of the kingdom, where the atmosphere is quiet and tense, and the colour changes to a sad grey.

Look I know I’m not great at describing these, but the point is that the artstyle is truly impressive. Each area is crafted with so much detail, and even if they’re non-habited, they each have their own soul, their own atmosphere and feel, if that makes sense. Travelling the world never feels repetitive, except maybe when you’ve explored literally everything, but y’know what I mean. You’ve got 15 areas to explore and discover here, and they’ve each got something new to offer.

As for worldbuilding, I know I talked a bit about this in the video’s previous segment, but I’ll say the same thing: it’s impressive. It might not always be easy to understand or to follow in terms of what’s going on in it, but once you do get a better understanding of it, be it through the wiki or through deduction, it’s hard not to admit that Team Cherry has worked hard on this and done a pretty good job at creating a convincing and immersive world.

To sum it up, Hollow Knight’s visuals are pretty damn good. It features a great, detailed, art style and has a range of different colours spread out on the map, which you’ll get to experience through the diverse set of areas the game has to offer. Repetitiveness is something you’ll rarely see when it comes to visuals.

All this alongside a carefully constructed, convincing and immersive world for the player to learn about and explore.

MUSIC & SCORE

And now, I can finally talk about one of my favourite parts of this game: its music.

Hollow Knight’s score is, without a doubt, one of the best I’ve heard. Christopher Larkin, the man in charge of the soundtrack, did a truly amazing job here. I highly recommend you listen to the soundtrack album.

Each area has its own soundtrack that kicks off once you step into it, and each one is as pleasant as the other. I’m not great at describing music, it’s more a sense of feel for me, but the mix of piano and viola softly playing in the background is just so nice to listen it.

On top of that, a lot of the bosses have their own soundtrack too, some of which are just amazing. One of my personal favourites is the Mantis Lords soundtrack, it’s just such a tense piece, kinda, and feels like it would fit a fencing duel, honestly.
Again, I really recommend you guys listen to some of the music, it’s just wonderful.

PROS/CONS & FINAL OPINION/TL;DR

Overall, this game is a must play for any platformer lover. Tight and smooth controls, an impressive range of visually pleasing and different areas to explore, tons of bosses and enemies to challenge, an intriguing story, and an honestly amazing score. On top of that, the game runs very well on PC, I never experienced any bugs, except maybe some enemies stuck in a wall, for instance, but even those were rare. No bugs or game crashes for my part, but keep in mind I only played this on PC, with a controller, if that’s relevant.

As for cons, there aren’t many, but if I had to pick out some things I disliked, I’d say it’s mainly the storytelling aspect of it.

While I do like the story and, now that I’ve got a better understanding and knowledge of it all, the world it takes place in, I do think they maybe should’ve improved a bit on that, and maybe just made the story a bit more understandable to players.

The storytelling is somewhat similar to Dark Souls, very non linear and sort of figure-it-out-yourself type thing. But then again, and I’ve said this before, I think most people will manage to understand the story as they go along, so in all honesty this isn’t even an entirely negative aspect of it.

Other than that, I really, honestly, have nothing else that I disliked about this game. It was a very fun and challenging experience, and it always felt satisfying to achieve something in the game, especially the boss battles.

It’s worth noting that this game’s full price was around 15 euros, which is cheap as hell, for a game that has this much this offer.

And that’s about it, really. Now, I don’t think I’ll be giving scores, not sure I’m into that much, but I can definitely recommend this game. Both lovers of the genre and players new to the genre can enjoy this game easily, imo, and I really do recommend you give Hollow Knight a try. It’s a beautifully crafted game by a small team, and considering its price right now, I would highly recommend it.

SpongeBob SquarePants: BfBB R. was released June 23rd of this year, that is 2020, and, for people who didn’t know, is actually a remake of the original 2003 game, hence the “Rehydrated” in the title. This remake was developed by Purple Lamp Studios, and published by THQ Nordic, who you might know from Darksiders, great game.

The game was released for PC, Xbox One and PS4, but I’ve only played it on PC so I can’t tell you what performance is like on other platforms. Also worth noting this isn’t a comparison review, it’s a review of the remake, and yes there will be a few comparisons, maybe.
Let’s move on to Story & Gameplay.

STORY AND GAMEPLAY

So this being a SpongeBob game, you should expect a SpongeBob story, meaning a silly, ridiculous and nonsensical story. And that’s exactly what it is: Plankton wants to take over using robots, but fails terribly when he forgets to set the robots to “Obey” mode, and it’s up to SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy, to save Bikini Bottom.

Like I said, it’s a spongebob game, and story wise, it’s got everything you could possibly expect from a spongebob story. It’s just pure silliness, that’s all. It’s not gonna be for everyone, obviously if you don’t like SpongeBob, well I’d say you’ll quickly get annoyed by the childishness of the game. And I’ll be honest, sometimes SpongeBob’s laugh or the humour of the game got on my nerves a bit, but I felt like it was a bit unfair to complain since that’s literally what SpongeBob is, silly childish humour.

Other than that there really isn’t much else to say about the story. The game is divided into the three sections of Bikini Bottom, and each section contains several areas for you to explore. In each of these areas you can switch between certain characters to solve certain puzzles, and your goal is essentially to find as many Golden Spatulas so you can open other areas. You usually will be getting these by completing little objectives or collecting objects, but you can also trade currency and collectibles for them too. By the way, there’s a total of 10 areas, and most of them have other characters in them which’ll give you mini objectives to complete for a spatula.

So there’s actually quite a fair amount to do, really. Naturally, it’s not an open world game filled with side quests and whatnot, but it’s got a good amount of content. There’s also a few bosses you get to fight. In terms of how the game actually plays, well, like I said you get to control three characters, Spongebob, sandy and patrick, and they’ve each got different attack sets, and Spongebob can learn different moves throughout the game. That’s pretty much it.

Gameplay wise the game really isn’t complicated, it’s a mix of simple combat and platforming, and it works very well for this particular game. You’ve gotta remember, it was probably aimed at younger audiences, so it’s just important to take the game for what it is.

The game also ran very smoothly, I never had any crashes or fps drops or anything like that.

I do have one or two complaints though, which I think are reasonable, since these concern the technical aspect of the game. I did encounter some bugs such as getting stuck here and there, and my only other complaint, is that the game tends to reset progress for some objectives sometimes. I’m not talking about enemies here, that respawn when you exit an area, but sometimes the game would reset some progress I’d made because I died, and it could be a bit frustrating at times, admittedly.

Other than that, really nothing bad to say. Typical spongebob story accompanied by simple, fluid gameplay. Pretty chill and easy going on the whole.

VISUALS

When it comes to visuals & graphics, I must say this game looks pretty good. It’s to be expected, of course, we are in 2020 after all, but the game looks very visually pleasing, and the colour palette is one my eyes certainly enjoyed. The colours didn’t feel over saturated, they didn’t pop out too too much, it was just a very nice look for game.

It’s also a pretty good improvement from the original game, which is also to be expected. The character models are a lot more detailed, I’ll try and put up some pictures so you guys can see, but each character’s models is really nicely done, and looks a lot more like the show than they did in the original. Animations are very clean too, and the characters you play also have idle animations which I thought was pretty cool.

So very nice visuals on the whole, didn’t have issues such as texture popping or blurry textures, everything looked really nice, and the colours were really pleasing.

SOUND & MUSIC

Alright, music! Well, like a lot of other aspects of this game, the game’s music is really what you would expect from it. Obligatory, the Spongebob theme song is in the game, but other than that you have your typical Spongebob music, with the hawaiian ish guitar usually leading. This is usually the case for the game’s hub, Bikini Bottom, but each area has got its little soundtrack too.

As for sound, it’s very cartoon ish, as you might expect. For example, a spring noise for jumping, the boing noise, the slap noise for attacking, things like that.

Regarding sound and music, I don’t have much else to say. The game’s sound design is on the whole pretty good, nothing spectacular of course, but definitely nice to listen to.

FINAL THOUGHTS & OPINION

Well, this was a relatively short review I’d say, and I know I’ve said this a few times already, but this game is exactly what you would expect from a Spongebob game. I saw a lot of people hating on the game for being dumb and whatever, but like, that’s exactly what Spongebob is.

So just keep this in mind when buying the game, it is mostly aimed at people who like Spongebob, and well, naturally, it’s gonna have Spongebob things, such as silly humour, dum dum characters and a ridiculously absurd story.

However, I don’t wanna gatekeep this game, and I do think that if you’re into platforming games and just want a relaxing, chill time, then this game might be for you. It can actually get somewhat challenging at times, if you’ve watched my let’s play you’ll know I actually died a few times, and I can’t tell if that’s embarrassing or not.

Again, keep in mind this is a spongebob game, and it’s exactly what you would expect from a spongebob game, pure silliness and simple fun. If you can’t accept that, you’ll get annoyed very easily.
Overall, very fun and chill game, and a great improvement over the original game, mostly on the visual side of things.

That’s gonna be it for my review, I hope it wasn’t too short, but really there’s only so much I can talk about concerning this game, and I feel like I’ve said what I needed to. Again, remember it’s a spongebob game, not some full blown action rpg with amazing mechanics.