Recent reviews by YourWishes

Really good, I rebound all the controls on my gamepad to match GTA-like helicopter controls, and set the auto level weights a bit higher to be a tad more arcade-like, but overall is a pretty good simulacra for the little bird.

I think the flying is pretty good, not exactly like GTA, the weights for returning to center and to start/stop moving feel a bit off, not to mention you can totally flip the helicopter without much trouble. All that being said it is quite enjoyable to fly around and avoid obstacles, the helicopter's size feels good and the flying challenges are a nice mix of speed and maneuverability, if a bit repetitive.

The combat is surprisingly well off. I think the game does best when at the last few waves of fighting, where there's a load of tanks, and soldiers with RPGs shooting at you, forcing you to do a bit of dodge-swey and aerial bombardments at the same time, it feels really nice. I think the early waves are a bit lacking as you are a decked out helicopter against a few soldiers who can only shoot at you with basic rifles, so they aren't much of a threat.

Everything else is "ok", music is alright but gets repetitive quickly, and the UI is a bit clunky and could do with some bug testing, especially on controller, but they are minor things on an otherwise good game.

Linked Mask can best be described as untapped potential wrapped in a flawed skin. There is everything to love about this game but a few major flaws that unfortunately bring the experience way down. A player must give a game designer time to build their hook, and let them explain their idea through the game play. The downside of this is that either the player must have enough patience to reach that point, or the game has to be intrinsically fun enough to help the player reach that state. This is the games' ultimate downfall, as it fails to grab from the outset, however it's not a lost cause, a few tweaks could drastically improve the experience.

Control issues can cover a braod series of factors, controller mappings, physics weights, animations, timings, etc. All of these areas, and more, play an influence on how it feels to "control" the game. In a platformer you want to have the tightness to feel you are always in control, but also give the player real weight and make jumps feel as heavy to play as they would be to do yourself. Too much choice may make the player feel like they are just moving a square on a screen, too little will make the game feel too cheap and frustrating. Ultimately the player control is Linked Mask's downfall and the primary reason people will be dropping the game so fast.

The character has immediate response to your inputs, both on the ground and while in air. This has the great benefit of allowing the player to make fast and immediate changes to their movement, however it removes all feel from the game. Releasing a movement key mid air causes the character to immediately stop moving, changing direction causes a "whiplash" effect, And jumping feels extremely floaty, yet and fast at the same time as there is very little hang time in the air.

These are not direct criticisms if the game has been built around this idea, but the core mechanics seem to be at odds with this movement design, requiring you to release the movement keys on slops to gain momentum while sliding, but then resetting the players' velocity the moment you have left the ground, requiring the player to constantly switch between not inputting and quickly holding to ensure the momentum isn't lost after jumping after a slide.

The other major contributor is the camera, which tries to follow the player fairly literally. The easing is not present, causing the camera to often move fast to try and catch up to the player, making the jumps hard to line up when going from a stand-still. Comparing to other games it seems that the "no-movement zone", the area where the camera won't move, even if the player does move, is too close to the center of the screen. It would be fine if the player gets 60% or so across the screen (from the center) before scrolling the camera, but this game feels closer to 20% or 30%.

Switching to some positives for a moment however, I do think the levels and layout were well thought out, and spent a long time thinking about how the player will approach each platforming challenge, and find a few ways to use its existing mechanics to make the player think about solving their challenges. There is definitely some kaizo-esque elements to punish even very new players, but never presented in a way where a player could never have seen it coming. The level design however is ultimately let down by both the player input and its visual design.

The game has a fantastic art-style, one that not only invokes the nostalgic Game Boy era of old, but takes influence from other works in different generations to present itself as a "lost Game Boy game that you forgot you owned". You'll find Super Mario World references, Mega-man stage selections, Castlevania inspired maps. Additionally it brings its own flavor of a hybrid ancient ruins mixed with mechs that wouldn't look out of place in Akira.

However, there graphics, while pretty, fail to serve the game-play in a few key ways. Having only four colours to work with limits your potential to distinguish different objects in the game scene. Background and foreground elements often blend and aren't distinguished. Spikes and grass look almost identical, and are often dark and easy to miss, all attempts to pull them into the foreground with a "glistening" animation doesn't go far enough.

Equally as confusing is how the player fails to be pulled out of the background with his flat colour choices, and dark thin outline. This point is especially confusing considering the enemies have a thick white and black outline that allows them to always pop, regardless of what background they are placed on. Same goes for the characters' "weapon", which has the same treatment. Inversely, some items pop that really don't need to.

Breaking blocks or killing enemies with the weapon results in an explosion particle effect that has had the same popping treatment as the enemies, adding a lot of visual noise to a normally muted screen. I spent a while going back and fourth on whether this was intentional or not, it seems like the art style may have changed here part way through development, I don't know how else to describe the, pun intended, contrast in visual designs.

Possibly the best part of the game is it's fantastic soundtrack with nice quiet moments, good mood setters, and a series of blood-pumping action hits. The composer made a good choice to omit the limitations of the 4 Channel Game Boy hardware and go with a full modern OST with no limitations to breath modern life into the classic art style.

Seeing as the music chose to go modern, it is a bit questionable why the sound effects did not get the same treatment. Hearing nice music is juxtaposed with 8 bit bleeps and bloops for attacks, effects, enemies, UI sound effects, etc. It's not that the sound effects don't fit the visuals, but it is extremely contrasting compared to the rest of the sound design. The limitations used for the sound effects keep them fairly generic, simple sound effects with no real "charm" added to them, don't expect any Super Mario styled power-ups, power-downs, deaths, etc jingles.

I think Linked Mask is close, one or two small changes could bring it back, and I really look forward to seeing what the team does over the next few updates, I will be coming back when some of these issues are corrected to play again and update my review for sure.