When you approach a work with a critical spirit – and especially a video game -, which is cemented on a solid core, this is one of the fundamental questions. Unsurprisingly, on rare occasions, it’s the details that, in theory, must contain large doses of genius and elevate titles to the altars… or unravel them inexhaustibly. It only serves to raise a solid andamiaje and, after all, the rest of the sheds do not reach the same height.
And that’s basically what’s happening to Blackwind.
Developed by Drakkar Dev and published by Blowfish and Gamera Games, Blackwind puts us in the shoes of James Hawkins, a warrior who travels with his father, Professor Hawkins, on his way to the planet Medusa-42. Whenever they get there, they’ll deliver the latest Battle Frame prototype – a chance exorcism/battle armor – to the naval expedition that encounters this planet the Rakdos, aliens with very bad chips and bad teeth and guns. After delivery, the Hawkins will be able to return home and see Petanca’s Interplanetary Championship Finals…or at least that would have happened otherwise because its nave received an unidentified attack from the surface of Medusa- 42 and the Professor is forced to use the armor to save young James from the impending colony, opening the door to our adventure.
An adventure that, without further ado, has the basic structure of a two stick shooter with small brushes hack’n slash. Our Battle Frame, which is very reminiscent of some Gundam models, is equipped with high-powered armor and latest generation AI. Thus, we can use our particular rays to eliminate enemies encountered at close range and finish with energy swords to those who have the courage to approach too closely. And as not everything will be divided, when our enemies have the courage to take out evasive resources like impulse or put them in the face of our terrifying missiles. All this is added to a decent control and a stable frame-rate to establish a judicial basis which, in its first compasses, provides quite positive sensations.
However, it is to deepen in the plantation of Blackwind that one begins to penetrate its double aristas. Many of them are to be seen with an artistic apartado which, while perfectly consistent in general terms, renders the detailed outline that leaps to the eye with ease. With some cinematic works in a style very close to North American comics, there are signs that the dialogues Stake they are folded and decorated with paintings that follow the same style as these. Without hesitation, our protagonist and his AI constantly repeat a reduced number of prefixed phrases at times such as enemy spawns, executions, and interactions with environmental objects such as doors. This fact opens the general whole of the title and, in particular, the moments where it pretends to be a real dramatization that clashes with sentences with a very different tone. It is inevitable that the player will not question the decision to implant a protagonist who questions the morality of meeting up with his enemies and immediately following a right word run to ship to the nearest alien. Similar issues arise when we encounter music, which sometimes has inspirational hints akin to obvious reference material such as Transformers and their guitars mixed with synthesizers, but the abuse that makes their songs matter is lost, far from the.
It’s kind of what happens with the rest of the gameplay. Although the concept of attacking enemies in the open field and in some more claustrophobic places does not present a priori problems, these are apparent when in this dynamic we summarize certain strong points such as the monotony of its rhythm and the lack elements such as basalt. searchable objects and maps. First of all, on many occasions we will find the repetition of a judicial scheme which will consist of visiting an area, clearing it of enemies and moving on to the next one. Along the way, Blackwind intends to introduce a variety of light situational puzzles using a drone separate from our armor or demonstrating jumping and movement techniques that we will also use in battle. Unsurprisingly, these bruises of various kinds come in the same error as the fight and immediately make us realize that these broken trunks have easily recognizable structures. Find a key or a door counter that we have to open, find ventilation conductors to manipulate the terminals with our navigator or use a switch here to facilitate the journey from its interludes to those whose edges we will soon recognize due to the repetition presentan obvious.
In the end, Blackwind’s biggest problem is that only from a really solid base – who wouldn’t want to get into a giant mech to scatter hosts and shoot giant aliens – none of its elements are anymore strictly basic. So much so that, despite not being a resoundingly long title, some of its dynamics seem to make a game feel much heavier than it actually is. . Backtrack, a brief list of enemies, environments that are very similar to each other and situations that are too obvious to focus on what we really expect from a title of these characteristics. Or, take shots with a wide variety of bichos, a refined action, an atmosphere that penetrates us through the eyes and a vibrant rhythm. Blackwind had armed a proprietary exoeskeleto for all of this. The problem is the paint.
