This one's been a real joy so far. I've been trying to be very disciplined about not going out for help, guides, advice or anything. If anything I've been too disciplined because, when we talked about it in class, I learned that I should have been paying a lot more attention to the pages from the manual I've been finding. There was some important stuff there (like how to upgrade your health, etc.) that I did not know and it's made the game a lot harder as a result. Oops.
So far I've really enjoyed how organic the discovery process has been and how it's not incredibly overwhelming - I've been able to loosely keep track of the things I've discovered and the things I have to return to. We'll see what happens when I play again, because I've had to take a break to get into another game...for class as well. So, what little muscle memory and skills I've developed, and what I know about the map and so on...it might be forgotten.
I've also found some weird unexplained stuff:
a. A room which was "south" of an area inside a building/cave. The room has a circle of pedestals (sort of where you'd place a bust), all empty and all had the option to interact with, but nothing happened. What is this place and will I have to return? No idea.
b. I've found three "shops" (I might have missed some). It's unclear to me if they're all the same shop in the sense of what's sold - I hope so, since it seems a bit annoying to have to visit them all just to see what they're selling. I hope the wares are the same.
c. I figured out the greyscale-dimension teleporting, and I teleported off a pad the took me to a small square room with no apparent exits. The teleported square was green instead of yellow like the rest. I wasn't able to do anything, I just teleported back. But, I wonder what that place was!
d. There are some hooks in areas that seem like I should be able to interact with. I'm guessing I still need to pick up an upgrade/ability/item to use them?
So, I'm looking forward to playing more, but I'm worried the game will get too hard for me (combat and bosses). We'll see. It got a lot easier when I did the upgrades...
I was half expecting not to like it just to be a sort of contrarian. But no, I was wrong and I have enjoyed my time with this game. I think a big part of it is that it seems to move along at a nice pace. I get a bit tired of those puzzle games that have 100 levels and you just start cranking and grinding away and it sort of loses the joy and appeal. Cocoon is different. It's still a puzzle game, and the puzzles are integrated into the games environments and I have no idea what's going on in this weirdly organic yet technological environment. It's all very alien, but in a good curious way rather than a scary creepy one. The world reminded me very much of the animated show Scavengers Reign. There's no voice or things to read, it's all very silent-protagonist. But, the protagonist is sort of like a bug-person so who knows what that should be like.
Great experience so far, and remarkably simple. I'm impressed by how easy it has been to learn to play the game, and there's only the arrows to move around and the space bar to interact. That's it. And it just seems very intuitive, which is rare and unusual for a puzzle game. Of course things get more complicated as I've picked up new orbs - each with their own rules/special-ness and I'm half expecting everything to get combined and then my brain will melt. But so far, so good.
There's also action-based bosses! These I'm less appreciative of, though they do bookend moments of progress and although they haven't been easy, I have been able to get past them even if it's taken a handful of attempts. The last one had me "shooting" myself around into a giant creature that's stomping around an arena. At this point I've got 4 orbs (red, green, purple, and white) and we'll see what happens. Are there more? The menu shows I've made good progress so we'll see.
I got really frustrated at the end of the 3rd mission - you're chasing a rogue agent - all that was fine. But, at the end there's a showdown - you fight and defeat him (health to zero) but then there's "magically" a second stage where he sits behind a barrier and shoots you while goons come out and fight you with punches.
By this point I had very little ammo left. Fortunately for me I had just enough so that I could shoot him and kill him - but only if I left that for the second stage. Had I ran out of ammo I'd have to punch goons, hope they dropped a briefcase with ammo, equipped it and continued. This would have been a timing nightmare (I do think the game pauses when you're checking the inventory), but still - it's extra awkward because tapping the inventory is a stylus rather than button (thus, a little bit slower).
So, all of this to say that I saw how this game let me paint myself into a corner - you have to shoot the baddie in the 2nd stage - what if you run out of ammo? Sure, more can appear from punching bad guys - but you have to pick it up in an awkward way all while being shot at. So, not a design I'm particularly impressed by.
BUT, it gets worse... at least my limited experience indicated it.
If you kill the baddie - yay, a door pops open. BUT the goons are still there and you need to take them out. AND, they keep on coming forever...you have to run to the door. But there's little room to move around and I was already weak. So, I lost a few times despite taking out the big baddie because I thought you had to clear the rest... and they kept on coming and then I died. Eventually I just booked it to the door which I think is what you're supposed to do. But I got there with some, IMO, unfair frustration.
Playing this back to back with Quantum of Solace on the DS was interesting - both games lean heavily on the stylus as the only means of interaction (ok the Bond game uses one button). And, they're both different in how they do it. This PoP game mostly has tapping - at least in what I've played so far. Tap and hold is an option too I guess (tap hold to run to a location, just tap to move). (Bond has lots of swiping and holding while moving the stylus). Which is better? It's sort of a "meh" question - depends on the game and implementation, no?
As a 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer it's a lot easier to control/make sense of the game compared with the 3D sort of isometric view...but, there's still some stuff that seems a bit too hard to do in this game. I'm about 17% of the way through (according to the save file at least) and, to be fair, I've only run into one major moment where I really struggled to make progress because I couldn't get either the timing of the taps or something else in order for me to make a jump. I eventually cleared it, but even as I type this I could not say what it was I was doing wrong and then did right. Perhaps it was just a finicky thing? Was my timing off? I even went back into the tutorial/help screens to see how the different moves were described in order to see if I had misunderstood something. Sadly the info was too sparse for me to figure anything out.
I'm not sure how much further I'll continue to play - so far the gameplay has gotten a bit deeper and richer, but not THAT much? And there's so many other games left to try out...
