[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Seed of Life through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Seed of Life
Systems: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox S/X,
Release Date: August 11, 2021 - May 30, 2024
Publisher: GS2 Games
Developer: MadLight
Time Spent: 3-3.5 Hours
The plot is pretty straightforward. You play as Cora who tasks herself with finding/locating an alien artifact that will help revitalize her dying planet, the seed of life if you will. The game is played as a third-person adventure game with environmental puzzles and some platforming elements. Where I stopped in the game, there was no combat system, only a runaway system from enemies that largely ignored the player and would follow a pre-set path.
The problems I had with the game, at least on the Switch, became evident early on. First, the frame rate wasn't great, but not such a red flag that I stopped playing immediately. Games don't need to run at 60 or even 30 fps to be playable, and while the game likely ran into the single digits in the clip below, I still felt that there was something here that could be enjoyed.
The second issue had to do with how Cora moved. When I started, Cora could only walk, which only made the game feel slower. Yes, there is a toggle in the settings menu before you start the game and I did select walking, but I had interpreted that as what your base-walking speed was and thought that I could hold down ZL or another button to have Cora sprint when I needed her to. This was not the case as I found out after an hour of playing. I then discovered that to have Cora run at all, you have to exit back to the main menu to turn running on, then continue. There is no in-between which is a very bizarre design choice and one that I don't recall having ever seen in a third-person game before. Had I not toggled the option for Cora to run, I don't think you could actually beat the game as the large canyon area where I stopped requires the player to quickly reach landmarks because your health is drained (like the timer life mechanic in the original Gauntlet). Why then have the movement speed be anything but running or even have this atrocious mechanic where you can only toggle via a menu only accessible from when you first turn the game on? There are platforming sections in the canyon area that would have been easier if you could toggle between walking and running. It doesn't make any sense to me and just makes me irritated the more I think of it.
The combination of these two issues ultimately contributed to my needing/wanting to stop playing the game. A couple of hours in, you come to a sprawling canyon area where the point is to reach far-off Lumia Capsules while you make your way through an area that automatically starts draining your life once you cross a threshold, so in essence you have a timer that is counting down until you die. There are large worm-like monsters that patrol this area that will further deplete your life and large Lumia plant-things that will recharge your own Lumia (an energy source that lets you track where you're supposed to go and fuels certain special abilities) and prevent your life from draining. So this whole area is a series of puzzles that require the player to determine where they need to go, and how to reach the goal while navigating a hostile environment, while also using the environment to their advantage. It makes a good case for why this should be a fun area and overall, a fun game, but because of how the game was ported to the Switch, it makes navigating platforms and jumping incredibly difficult. Case in point:
So the platforming itself isn't complicated, but only being able to run while the game fps stutters makes timing jumps very difficult. At least the load time between dying and respawning is only a few seconds, which I guess makes dying in the exact same area twice in 30 seconds all the more frustrating. But then when you compound the situation with additional elements like the game needing to render the environment along with particle-like smoke elements and enemy movements, the game becomes what I would define as unplayable.
This is what really frustrates me about Seed of Life. When I started the game, and I was only walking around, because there wasn't a need to run around apart from getting somewhere faster, the game was fine. Not great, but playable and fine. But once you really needed to run to traverse locations faster because of the life timer mechanic, that's when the lag and stuttering became more pronounced because the game was becoming more difficult. But that's fine that the game was becoming more difficult, it makes sense otherwise the game would be too easy and less interesting. It all comes to a head because the company that ported Seed of Life to the Switch* did such a poor job that it negates any positive aspects that MadLight put into the creation of the game.
Obviously, I can't recommend the Switch port of Seed of Life at any price point and I would need to watch a thorough review of the original PC game before I think about trying to play this on the Steam Deck.
P.S. The other thing that really irks my gourd, is that all of the pictures on the Nintendo eShop page are all taken from the PC version of the game, not the Switch port. It's really obvious in the second and third pictures and the fact that there isn't a video trailer either on the eShop page or one released by the developer/publisher on YouTube.
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