Couple of things in this review I take issue with. First are his comments on the aesthetics, which have some truth in them but are nowhere near nuanced enough to cover what is really going on in that department. There are aspects of the game which, from screenshots at least, look quite beautiful to me -- and then there are other negative aspects which he did cover. The main negative which he didn't cover, however, is how empty and lifeless the stages look, so that, when coupled with the autism and the retarded protagonist designs, I am sure would make me feel depressed after playing for a while, despite the aforementioned positive aesthetic aspects -- which I will detail if I end up writing a "second opinion" on this game after I try it for myself.
More importantly, however, I take issue with what he says here:
Stealth wrote:It’s not that speedruns are an inherently flawed mechanical concept — certainly mastering a character’s movement can make for a proper challenge —
Speedruns ARE an inherently flawed concept, as I've explained at length in my scoring essay. But the thing is that there's no "speedrunning" here. Speedrun is a term used when a player imposes his own objective on the game to clear it as quickly as possible, but that -- from what the reviewer says -- is the game's own objective here, so the player doesn't have to impose anything. Is playing a racing game a "speedrun"? Is Forza 5 a "speedrun" game? It is a racing game -- speedruns have no significance here.
You can see that the reviewer is sort of fumbling throughout the review to express something close to what I clearly and succinctly expressed with my introduction text on the frontpage in a couple of lines:
I wrote:"Indie" newcomer Hitbox Team takes inspiration from speedrunners to deliver a platformer, not merely subverted by autism, but specifically built for it.
In the beginning he uses the concept of Time Attack to describe what is going on, then towards the end he talks about racing games, and both of these are good attempts, but he fucked up with his use of the speedrun because he doesn't seem to really understand what it means, or have the clarity of thought to relate it properly to what this game is doing. Normally I correct mistakes like this if I can in the editing process, but in this case the relevant comments are so extensive that I would have to rewrite half the review to do so, and I could easily fuck it up since I haven't even played the game. So until I do I believe that the review accompanied by my comments here do a decent job of providing a just appraisal of the game for whoever is interested in it.
P.S. If you are interested in seeing more screens, take a look here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/65300/screenshots/
There are plenty of both good and bad ones, but I don't have the time right now or the inclination to pick them out and analyze what I think is right and wrong with them. Maybe someone else would like to try until I get in the mood for it.
