In a word: confusing.

This game strives forward in making movement that is fun to use and abuse to get around, and it's abundantly clear that the developers understand what makes moving around fun. Simultaneously, the level design fails to learn from the mistakes of games that are over 20 years old. Overall, it's a net positive, but I hope that the level design adapts to the slippery movement better. As it stands, there is too small a margin of error in most areas I've played.

To reiterate, the movement is unique and engaging. There's not a slow moment where the player is only pushing forward on the joystick (or w key, for you heathens out there), even on flat ground. The mechanics with the rod are smooth and easy, and it's fun to mess around with the physics.

The most glaring issues with this game, however, lie in it's level design. The approach tends to lean towards one minute challenges at a time, which is fine, but these challenges tend to be unforgiving. Falls and traps that reset your progress completely are everywhere, and the developers make no secret of their unwillingness to give you a safety net. Issues that were obvious and hated in Super Mario 64 and Sunshine have made their return, and they are center stage. I'm fine with a difficult game, but I feel there's a difference between the challenge to complete a task and the challenge to continue attempting a task. Those 1 minute challenge segments aren't really 1 minute if I miss a jump 24 times in a row. The jump itself wasn't necessarily hard, but now I have to redo everything I just did over the course of the last 45 seconds to attempt that jump again.

I can already hear the cries of "skill issue" and "it's not that much time," but the fact of the matter is, some of these challenges are downright malicious in their presentation. I hope that the approach to level design is reconsidered, but I also understand that at this point, so much of what has been laid down is immutable. To change the areas that are the most difficult is to change the entire game. I can't offer a reasonable solution that would keep the content already made while addressing the issues I've brought up, save for extreme suggestions such as reorganizing the levels to keep harder challenges gated until the player has a skill level more capable of adapting to those challenges. Even then, this is stop gap, and does not address the key issue; there are no safeties, and the developers don't care how many attempts it takes you.

This isn't necessarily bad, but it's a bit unexpected for a platformer. Off putting, even. Maybe I'm just used to easier platformers and can't conform.

6/10

A must play if you like 3D platformers.

me arrependi de jogar esse jogo, jogo mal otimizado, o boneco não agarra na parede. a pior experiencia de jogo que eu ja tive