Recent reviews by Wildrn

waw waw wicky wicky

My disdain for platformers could be likened to Murdoch media's approach to honesty.
My loathing of the entire genre could be considered similar to Pauline Hanson's stance on any non-white Australian resident.
I do not like them.
I do not wish to be near them.
I do not care to acknowledge their existence beyond stating my aversion toward them.

With this in mind, Ori and the Will of the Wisps - along with it's predecessor - is without a doubt one of my all-time favourite games ever, of all time, forever and always, eternally forever for all of time to infinity and beyond.

Let's sort out some quick pros and cons before I break it down. Also for reference I finished the story on Hard with around 14 hours worth of playtime, missing only a small handful of the collectables.

Pros

• Visuals - Holy fork are you seeing this? This game is so forking gorgeous I want it to be the last thing I see before I die.
  
• Narrative - This forking game (much like the previous one) had me completely hooked, and going through my entire emotional range. I'm talking all the way from blissful glee to pure rage.
  
• Gameplay/progression - Plenty of freedom in terms of character and story progression.

Cons

• Bugs/Glitches - Personally I only experienced a bug with certain parts of the audio cutting out, but others have reported quite a few errors.
  
• I had a few minor issues with certain parts of the level design.
  
• Chase sequences were clearly not made with mouse and keyboard in mind. SPOILER: FORK YOUR FORKING SANDWORM FORK

With that out of the way, welcome to my spoiler safe review; where I will mostly expand upon previous points and give you my completely subjective opinion on whatever the fork I feel like at the time. Also you may notice a great many instances of the word "fork" haphazardly scattered throughout, because for possibly the first time in my life I seemingly have an overabundance of forks to give.

Technical issues aside, this game is a forking masterpiece. The story and the way it's told reaches into my forking soul. The absolutely stunning artwork and lively animation make me appreciate having eyes like nothing else. The sound design is both literally and figuratively music to my ears. As a piece of art, Will of the Wisps perfect.

But it's a game, so what about the gameplay?

Will of the Wisps basically takes the systems from Blind Forest, and improves upon them. In line with its mostly open level design, the movement feels free and fluid, with a progression of abilities that quickly expand your capabilities. The combat system has been reworked to where all of your attacks/abilities can be assigned to any of your three available buttons/keys; so you are able to craft your own loadouts dependant on your playstyle.

The abilities are sorted into Passive and Active categories. The passive abilities are shards you discover or purchase along the way, which you will have to choose between as you have limited slots. Active abilities work much the same in that story-driven abilities will be found as you go, but some combat abilities can also be bought. These abilities provide a solid level of player customisation so you can choose what works for you.

The world contains a handful of different areas to explore, each containing their own enemy variants and gameplay elements, and is more or less open to you beyond the first act. Throughout the game you'll find hidden areas with collectables, some which will require backtracking later on, some which don't, and some which should but with a bit of finesse can be snagged early on. There are also a few small sidequests to keep you busy along the way, as well an assortment of characters to come across in your travels.

For the most part, the level design is phenomenal. Beautiful dynamic scenery and objects that respond to player and AI interaction. Puzzles that are easy enough for younger players to figure out, though still complex enough for more experienced players to enjoy. My only gripes are with the occasional odd camera placement making it difficult to navigate certain danger zones.

The only thing I can say for certain I'm personally not a fan of are the chase sequences, where you have to navigate through a dynamically shifting level whilst being chased (hence the name) the entire time. My dislike for these has almost nothing to do with the level design (except for the last one, which I'll get to in a second), but with the controls and camera movement. The camera movement and visuals do occasionally get in the way during the faster parts of these, which can be rather distracting. These sequences typically involve a lot of rapid precise movement - with a lot of dodge spamming - which on mouse and keyboard is really forking uncomfortable, given that the dodge key is set to CTRL by default. This is particularly evident in the final chase sequence - forking kant sandworm motherforker - where even more precision is required due to the use of an ability you pick up along the way (burrowing/sand dash) and some really annoyingly placed scenery edges. This coupled with what I can only describe as a distance limit on how far ahead of the boss(?) you can physically get, makes this particular sequence a massive pain in my forking ass; or rather my left hand, given the prom night level of fingering my dodge key received. Do take in account though that I've only played through on Hard, and am not sure if any of this is changed on easier difficulties.

Alright so bugs. Straight up, I only experienced two different bugs; both minor at worst.

• Weird audio bug where only the sounds of certain characters stopped playing - experienced three times, fixed with restarting the game
  
• Weird visual bug where using the bash abilities on enemies sent the camera/playermodel all over the place for a few seconds before returning to normal.

I didn't come into this review with any plan and I'm clearly not a writer so all up, this game's forking lit. I would recommend both this game and it's predecessor to literally anyone who'll listen to me.

Peace out, and Epstein didn't kill himself.

~ edited for child friendliness, please use your imagination for the full effect ~

It's shi- YEAH IT'S ♥♥♥♥
Oh wait no wrong game it's ac- YEAH NO NO H-HE'S RIGHT I-IT'S REALLY FUN
Yeah it's prety funny OH YE-YEAH IT'S HILARIOUS
Yeah no i- YEAH IT'S GREAT
Yea- SO GREAT

Fun experience.
Short, but fairly smooth gameplay and lots of potential.

all 'bout dat rooty tooty point 'n shooty

Awesome devs, smooth mechanics, fantastic experience.

Naked men bashing other naked men with rocks.
11/10