Aksys Games
offers us many games in the BIT.TRIP series, I think five or six. I will look at all of them one at a time, but not in any real order, so I'll just start with one
randomly chosen: CORE.
BIT. TRIP
CORE is kind of hard to put under a genre. Is it meant like an
old-school arcade game? Is it a music game? Is it a puzzle game? Hard
to tell, because really, all three genres could apply. Fine then, an
old-school arcade-like musical puzzle game.
You don't
get much of an explanation on how the game works at first, so you
have to try stuff. What I got is this: There's a + in the middle of
the screen, and yellow squares start moving across the screen in a
straight line. What you basically have to do is wait for the square
to be aligned with the +, and then press the button on the
directional pad corresponding to the side the square is on (up, down,
left, right), and press A to destroy the square. This makes a little
musical note. It starts easy enough, with only one square moving on
the screen at a time... But after a while, after a square has started
moving, another appears, and then another, and then another, and most
of them are going in different directions... Phew! And you must still
try to hit them all. Some have differing speeds, so you need to take
that into consideration. Oh, and after a while the squares become
more difficult to hit, their trajectory curves, and stuff like that.
This musical
puzzle game is a bit (pun not intended) fun, but I was really not too
good with it. I still did beat one or two levels. I ended on a third
one, which had stopped being colorful and instead had only black and
white graphics reminiscent of Pong. In other words, I liked it a bit,
it was a fun trip, but I doubt I reached the core of the game.
This game
sure feels like a love letter to those very old arcade games with
simplistic graphics. Kind of like the good old days of Atari, which
I'm too young to have seen. The only major problem with this game is
that the backgrounds are very unnerving, they distract you from the
constant attention your should keep to be able to destroy the squares
correctly.
I guess if
you have fast reflexes and talent when it comes to puzzle games, have
a go at it. If you don't... Well, still have a try at the demo
version and see if it's your thing. It might not be mine, but it
could be yours.
No comments:
Post a Comment