@tombo was kind enough to gift me a key for this a while ago and now that I’m out of the grip of Persona Fever I jumped into this. Impressions follow:
The writing is horrible. Like it hasn’t not annoyed me yet. The protagonist is all smirking self-deprecation and lamely executed pop culture references. The antagonist (an AI who seems like a mishmosh of GladOS and others) name-drops Bangai-Oh and talks about being good at Shmups. Maybe the speedrun mode shuts them up so you can just play, and that would automatically make it the optimal mode. The soundtrack and graphics are both what I’d call serviceable, though I will say I do find the walking animation of your little spidermech thingy to be especially pleasing to watch.
Otherwise what we’ve got here is a a nice twinstick (or mouse and keyboard if you’re a sick person) platformer/shooter with a lot of fun setpieces that finds ways to remix its own formula on the fly. Contrary to what I thought based on screenshots and a brief trailer, there is no exploration whatsoever in this game. I came in expecting some kind of metroidvania but it’s entirely linear. Each area is treated as a level (and they all end in what feels like awfully arbitrary fashion). Some get revisited under different conditions and that’s something I can appreciate, I enjoy when spaces in games get transformed in that way. There are upgrades you can get but they mostly serve to make combat a little easier and have nothing to do with unlocking new areas, etc. Combat’s mostly on the easier side on the Normal difficulty setting, and unfortunately the one situation so far that promised to put a real fun spin on things lasted for all of about 5 minutes.
There is “hacking” in this game, but essentially you just toggle your machinegun for a magical hacking beam that lets you brainwash an enemy. There are only specific types of enemies you can do this to. You also use this to activate switches in some places but there aren’t any puzzles to speak of. Platforming challenges appear sporadically and are sort of poor. The default control scheme at least seems ill-suited to them, with your jump/doublejump button being mapped to the controller’s left trigger.
The achievements in Steam suggest there are secret items to find. I have no idea what they are and I also can’t say I particularly care. I almost feel certain that they’re probably more references to other video games and I don’t want to look that up and feel depressed. I’m about two hours deep into the game and I think pretty near the end. I’ll probably polish it off in another sitting sometime in the coming week and if any further thoughts are sparked. I always hate myself for saying things like this because I’d feel shitty if people went around saying not to buy my game at full price, but yeah. Had I spent $15 on this I think I’d have not considered it well spent. This is one to pick up during a sale.