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dkirschner's Lovely Planet (PC)

[August 9, 2016 06:33:22 PM]

I'm very impressed that i made it 3/5 of the way through Lovely Planet. That game is hard. Lovely Planet is basically an FPS speedrunner's dream come true. It helps if that speedrunner likes Katamari Damacy too because the art and the music remind me of it.

You have a gun that fires purple squares, of which you have infinite ammo with no reloading. There are various "baddies" around the level, and new varieties come with each new world (5 worlds, roughly 20 levels per world). In the beginning, there are some innocent blue block people (don't shoot them, or it's level restart), some easy stick-like enemies, some red blocks that shoot purple squares at you, and maybe some other things that show up, can't remember. In each level, you have to kill all the baddies and reach the end without triggering a level restart (i.e., dying). If you get shot, it's a level restart, if you finish the level but leave a baddie alive, it's a level restart, if you fall off the ground into the abyss, it's a level restart, and there are other ways of failing later.

I made it pretty easily through the first world. The second one gave me some trouble near the end, as it introduces some serious acrobatic feats. There are these "tomatoes," for lack of a better description, that launch on your movement (when you move past a certain point, the tomato launches), and you must shoot the tomato before it hits the ground. So toward the end of the second world, it introduces tomatoes that don't launch until after you run past them, which means, in this one crazy instance, that you have to run past this grounded tomato, jump toward a faraway platform, TURN AROUND in midair, shoot the tomato, TURN BACK AROUND, bounce off the platform to the next platform as a second tomato launches in front of you, bounce off the second platform and nail the second tomato before it hits the ground. That one took me a while, but I felt amazing when I got it.

Lovely Planet is full of those moments that make you feel amazing for accomplishing some fantastic feat of dexterity. It's very Super Meat Boy-ish in that regard. The third world introduces some blocks with hats that shoot homing missiles at you, as well as some energy field triggers that will cause a level restart if you are in the energy field about 3 seconds after it triggers. Took me a few minutes to figure out what was killing me on this one level, then I realized what those triggers were (they look like yellow dandelions or something). Note that the game provides no tutorial or hint or instruction. You have to figure out what's killing you and what the rules are for yourself. It actually works and feels rewarding.

On to the 4th world! It's a swamp, and this is where I threw in the towel. The swamp world is filled with fog, so you can't see very far ahead of you. For the whole rest of the game, my success was due to my reactions and developing skill, as well as a little bit of learning where baddies are. In the swamp, learning where baddies are becomes the main thrust. That's too bad because it minimizes what I thought was the great part of the game, my reaction to seeing what's ahead and my skill at handling what I can see being thrown at me. Introduce fog, and you can't really see what's ahead. So it becomes about going forward bit by bit, memorizing what's beyond in the fog, and then just following your memory. Yeah, your reaction is still tested, but it feels straight up unfair now, and the focus has to win by memorization.

I watched the rest of worlds 4 and 5 on YouTube, and I definitely wouldn't have made it much farther in world 4. There's a video of someone doing world 4 and world 5 perfect (that is, complete the stage with 100% accuracy and under the goal time limit, and these two videos show the person completing many 3-star levels quite close to the tip top of the global leaderboards, geez). World 5 introduces teleportation and blue "innocent" baddies that shoot at you, but you still can't shoot them. Parts of those last two worlds look insane. I think my head would explode. Fun game, the free price tag!