add cool game links page
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i bought eastward within a couple of days of release (16th september 2021), and i finally finished it at the start of july. i think that says a lot about both the flaws and strengths the game might have; the story is overall plagued by weird pacing (although i think it might be somewhat intentional), but it has enough going for it to drag me back in and finally finish it ten months later.
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big elements of the games story are key to the experience as a whole, so i'm just going to slap this whole thing with a big spoiler warning. my short thoughts are that eastward is one of the best looking games that i have ever played, and the whole experience is only marred by a story that is paced a little weirdly and is sometimes a bit difficult to get your head around. well worth a look!
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### feel
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the _feel_ of eastward hits you immediately, and there's a good chance that you bought it because of the _feel_ you got from trailers and clips and screenshots. the world is insanely detailed with potentially the best spritework that i have ever seen. there is very little in the way of reused assets except where it makes sense to do so (furniture and combat related items crop up repeatedly, but i can happily give that a pass). every single building is unique with its own structure, history, greebles and crumbling advertisements. everything was hand designed by some of the most talented environment designers i have had the pleasure of witnessing.
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the sprite format also works perfectly for this effect, by limiting the amount of detail you can expect to see. this would be much harder to pull off in a 3d engine with realistic assets. when you only have to draw junk and construction debris up to a pixel scale, you can focus on squeezing everything out of a location without fear of not being detailed _enough_.
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these worlds are also filled with people, and no side characters are alike. regular humans, weird mutants and robots all coexist, and while a lot of the dialogue for a lot of them is pretty standard rpg fare, they help sell the feel of an area by giving you a slice of what pepole are thinking about their situation. nothing groundbreaking, to be sure, but not hearing it from a cookiecutter model that has been used multiple times in one area, makes it feel like it's coming from an actual person with actual opinions.
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these worlds are absolutely filled with people, and no side characters are alike. regular humans, weird mutants and robots all coexist, and while a lot of the dialogue for a lot of them is pretty standard rpg fare, they help sell the feel of an area by giving you a slice of what pepole are thinking about their situation. nothing groundbreaking, to be sure, but not hearing it from a cookiecutter model that has been used multiple times in one area, makes it feel like it's coming from an actual person with actual opinions.
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the game's structure also does a stellar job of reinforcing the world itself. while the stop and start pacing does feel very odd and definitely made me lose interest once or twice, it gives you an overall feeling of uncertainty; this place might be really nice, but there is a feeling in the back of your mind that something might go horribly wrong at any moment. potcrock isle sounds like somewhere you should be in and out of in thirty minutes but you actually spend quite a bit of time there. greenberg is unbelievably homely but its a fraction of the amount of time before you're forced to leave. you're in new dam city for so long that it feels like this might be it, and it becomes hard to imagine where else you would even go.
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the music of the game is lovely, although i'm hesitant to talk about it much after hearing it quite as much as i did. most of the tracks are under two minutes and can loop multiple times through the games long dialogue and exploration scenes. that whinging aside, the music is a perfect fit for the earthbound nostalgia that the game is playing with and i enjoyed it immensely.
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