I'm gonna rant a little bit about Timespinner, since I recently finished the game. It's not a bad game but it is a disappointing one.
Firstly because in a game called TIMEspinner, where you play a "TIME Messenger", who gets sent back in TIME, and whose very first power is to stop TIME (ie. temporarily freezing enemies and platforms in place), TIME manipulation actually factors very little in the game. I mean that's about it, once it's been tutorialized. The mechanic never really evolves nor does it offer useful combat applications for it, outside maybe dodging a couple of boss attacks towards the end. I'll say it's nice to pause everyone in the larger corridors once you're on backtracking/cleaning up mode. But for the most part you'll probably forget, like me, that pausing time is even a mechanic.
This dovetails into the game's poor variety - you fight the same enemies in the same surroundings, over and over. No two enemies behave all that differently from each other, which never warrants much experimentation with the game's 20 something weapons (the Axiom Verge problem). The enviroments are repetitive because you essentially play through the same map twice - the past and present versions of it - with little to differentiate them outside roadblocks. You find a secret room in one map, you can guarantee the other map will hide the same secret room in the same location. Riveting. There's some time-manipulation stuff in terms of altering the past to change something about the future but it's all pretty much baked into the story.
The movement is nice, especially once you unlock every ability has to offer. I finished this yesterday and don't even remember if there's a double-jump. There's a skate ability and a shoot-upwards ability that reveals, holy shit, the game handles momemtum nicely. And the feel of the combat is nice, even if it's all just variations of attack arcs. It's not very elegant but it's precise.
The story isn't *that* bad. I think what sours it is the uppity dialogue and wtf conversation pieces. It so happens that your main character, the one redeemable villain and all five NPCs that join your cause are members of the 2SLGBTQIAP+ spectrum. Actually every character with the exception of the other two (non-redeemable) villains is 2SLGBTQIAP+. You play a bisexual female, hailing from a polyamorous matriarchy, who strikes a relationship with a m2f trans and whose other allies are all gay, lesbian or asexual. And then once you finish every optional quest you're treated to an embarrassing cutscene where every character talks and jokes about their sexuality like they just met and they're on an internet forum instead of hunkered around a campfire the night before storming Mordor. But I guess that's what you get when you outsource your writing to Silverstring Media.
Firstly because in a game called TIMEspinner, where you play a "TIME Messenger", who gets sent back in TIME, and whose very first power is to stop TIME (ie. temporarily freezing enemies and platforms in place), TIME manipulation actually factors very little in the game. I mean that's about it, once it's been tutorialized. The mechanic never really evolves nor does it offer useful combat applications for it, outside maybe dodging a couple of boss attacks towards the end. I'll say it's nice to pause everyone in the larger corridors once you're on backtracking/cleaning up mode. But for the most part you'll probably forget, like me, that pausing time is even a mechanic.
This dovetails into the game's poor variety - you fight the same enemies in the same surroundings, over and over. No two enemies behave all that differently from each other, which never warrants much experimentation with the game's 20 something weapons (the Axiom Verge problem). The enviroments are repetitive because you essentially play through the same map twice - the past and present versions of it - with little to differentiate them outside roadblocks. You find a secret room in one map, you can guarantee the other map will hide the same secret room in the same location. Riveting. There's some time-manipulation stuff in terms of altering the past to change something about the future but it's all pretty much baked into the story.
The movement is nice, especially once you unlock every ability has to offer. I finished this yesterday and don't even remember if there's a double-jump. There's a skate ability and a shoot-upwards ability that reveals, holy shit, the game handles momemtum nicely. And the feel of the combat is nice, even if it's all just variations of attack arcs. It's not very elegant but it's precise.
The story isn't *that* bad. I think what sours it is the uppity dialogue and wtf conversation pieces. It so happens that your main character, the one redeemable villain and all five NPCs that join your cause are members of the 2SLGBTQIAP+ spectrum. Actually every character with the exception of the other two (non-redeemable) villains is 2SLGBTQIAP+. You play a bisexual female, hailing from a polyamorous matriarchy, who strikes a relationship with a m2f trans and whose other allies are all gay, lesbian or asexual. And then once you finish every optional quest you're treated to an embarrassing cutscene where every character talks and jokes about their sexuality like they just met and they're on an internet forum instead of hunkered around a campfire the night before storming Mordor. But I guess that's what you get when you outsource your writing to Silverstring Media.
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