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There’s not a great deal to say about this, aside from that a couple of the final levels were pretty tricky, and even though the end boss appeared both indestructible and virtually impossible to dodge I still managed to off him on my first attempt.
The Wii remote is the best weapon by far, incidentally, except on the final boss where I found the pillow invaluable with it’s rapid fire.
Fun, and I’ll probably play it a bit longer, but time needs to be spent on StreetPass Fishing now!
Like the awesome but mostly ignored Wii version of Geometry Wars, Geometry Wars 3 (which was a free PS+ rental this month) has a great single player “adventure” mode. Each level takes one of the main score attack modes and requires you to beat a certain score or clear a level in under a certain time with the rules of that mode, or perhaps with no smart bomb or extra lives.
In addition, every so many levels, there’s a boss (which is a new thing in the series, I think?). All the bosses are superficially the same, consisting of a large gemstone type enemy who periodically drops its shield while spawning standard Geometry Wars enemies and occasionally rushing you.
It all feels a bit like a “best of” Geometry Wars, really. It has the stuff from the first two games, and from the Wii game, and then nicks a chunk from the also excellent Nano Assault Neo by setting many of the levels on the surface of a 3D shape rather than on a flat plane. As you progress through Adventure mode, the score multiplier Geom items also act as currency with which to buy or upgrade special weapons and drones.
Frankly, it’s superb and my only issue with the Adventure mode is that the final boss is a massive, massive difficulty spike. I easily spent as long attempting that single level than I did on the previous 49 levels combined! A single life and multiple “phases” and attack patterns, along with insta-death walls did not make it simple.
If there’s one negative thing to say about Child of Light, it’s the diabolical dialogue. All of the conversations and narration take the form of terrible rhyming couplets. Rhyming couplets that are forced, contrived, often don’t rhyme, and very rarely even scan. At first it feels clever and cute, but after a few minutes you’d rather everyone just spoke properly and it grates for the next twelve or so hours until it’s complete.
Which, yes, it is complete.
Thankfully, there’s only really the one negative thing to say about Child of Light. The rest is all good. I could say it’s a bit easy (none of my characters ever died and I used just three health potions – and no other potions at all – in the entire game), I could mention most of the characters in your party are superfluous (I rarely used more than Finn and the mouse), and I could say that for an RPG it was a bit short, but it doesn’t really matter. What is important is how much fun it was, how there was never any need to grind, how much I enjoyed the story (despite the “poetry”), and how unusual it was to play.
As well as using the same game engine as Rayman Legends, some of the Murfy sections have sort of translated to a mechanic here, too, where you move your little firefly chum around the screen with either the touchscreen or (more usually) the right stick, using him to activate and collect things. During time-turn based battles he can heal you and your allies or slow down enemies, which adds more than you’d expect.
The battles themselves, which make up the majority of the gameplay, appear like standard JRPG turn based fights. However, there’s a timeline on the bottom of the screen which all the characters (on both sides) move across. When your characters get to the final 1/5th of the bar, you can choose their action – such as attack or defend – and when they reach the end of the bar that action is carried out. If you’re attacked in that final section, your action is interrupted and you’re chucked back down the timeline again. Similarly, your foes do the same. This adds a lot of strategy to the fights, since different actions activate at different speeds you have to decide if your chosen one is fast enough to get in before it’s interrupted or countered. I’m pretty sure I’ve played a game with a similar system before, Eternal Sonata maybe? Whatever it was, it works great here.
Child of Light is definitely worth playing, and even better if you manage to pick it up in a sale (like I did!).