Author: Haohai Haihai
I believe many people know about this game called "Anno: Mutation" for many years, and I was first attracted to TapTap by its unique art style and looked forward to it for many years. Now this game is finally launched on multiple platforms, and the pricing of the 78 yuan body is not cheap in domestic games, but it also makes me look forward to the quality of the game.
After playing through the level, I think that of the game's 78 yuan, 77 yuan can only be given to art. The game's plot and combat action design, which are difficult to describe under unbalanced values, also make this cyberpunk adventure experience seem less friendly to players.
You perceive standard cyberpunk and SCP scenarios
Just by looking at the game's promotional graphics or promotional videos, the characters are in the middle of a cyberpunk-style city. Colorful neon lights, horizontal and vertical wire pipes, large banner prosthetic reconstruction advertisements... If you can accept the pixel style of the character, then there is no doubt that this seems to be a standard cyberpunk world that you perceive.
At the beginning of the game, players will take the elevator down from the classic cyberpunk wind pipe building and enter the street, where bodhisattva posters, worshipped gods, cheongsam girl standing signs and other elements of oriental culture are greeted. Players switch TV channels, pick up news newspapers that show the world, kick boxes on the road, and even accidentally break vases in the store, and are taught a lesson by the shop owner. In the initial small area, there are many triggerable interaction elements, NPCs that can talk to each other, and tasks to be discovered.
I used to go to a new place, not to worry about the task, but to explore everywhere, talk to people, and discover new things. With the electronic music style of BGM, walking through the streets, triggering the feeling of adventure is really good.
There are many areas of different styles in Anno: Mutations, and the scene art features distinctive features. There are both the neon of the city that lights up at night and the deserted roads that are lonely in the mist. Players will infiltrate the gang's lair in the dock harbor and explore the hidden truth in the underground facilities.
The scenes range from cyberpunk to SCP-style architecture, and they are the most classic styles that you can recognize at a glance. Although it cannot be said that there is no innovation, it does lack freshness. You can see shadows from many other game scenes in this game, so much so that it feels as if it were copied directly.
There are only gimmicks in the clouds
Honestly, I was worried when I saw the slightly greasy characters in the promotional image. But the actual character is a 2D pixel style, a high ponytail with long legs, and the appearance is unexpectedly good. In the performance, it is not discounted because it is a pixel style, and the animation performance of the characters is generally satisfactory. It is worth mentioning that the Chinese dubbing quality of the game is very good, not contradictory and can make people into the play very well.
And what makes people doubly happy is the heroine or lesbian design, there is a lively and cute girlfriend who will accompany the player throughout the adventure, and the two in the plot are giving dog food from time to time. However, in the later stages, the rainbow fart has always been a bit annoying.
Players can meet a variety of characters on this expedition, preachers, gangsters, robots... But except for the two girls, the characters of others are not very satisfactory, after the journey, the player may not remember more than the hand index of one palm, the dialogue language completely serves the main line of the plot, and other details of life that make people have memories are missing.
Anno: Mutation presents a grand worldview, but the downside is that it doesn't make it clear to the player. Saying that it is a cyberpunk world travel adventure is actually just a science fiction skin. To learn more details, you can supplement your worldview by flipping through the data scattered around, but the hard-to-read documentation makes people look at it in the clouds.
The process of the heroine as a sister to find her lost brother runs through the entire plot, and from the middle stage, it suddenly begins to metaphysically, which makes people scratch their heads. It was only later that I discovered that this was originally a worldview based on SCP. However, the SCP only stays in the introduction of some documents and some pictures, but does not show the unknown charm of SCP, but is only used as a gimmick.
In the plot, you can feel as if the whole world knows who the protagonist is, but as far as we don't know, the plot of the riddle man makes people feel empathetic. Then the ending is suddenly and inexplicably asked to save the world, becoming a proper tool man, and the degree of speechlessness is breathtaking. At the same time, it is interspersed with the scene that pauses for a few seconds from time to time, making the complete plot as if it is split, and people just want to slam skip.
In addition to the main line, there are also many side quests in the game and small game puzzle solving elements mixed in the process such as bartending, unlocking, etc., but the guidance is relatively simple, and some puzzles are not logical, and many times players have to explore by themselves, and it is easy to find the next step.
Finally, I would like to complain that the English names in the game are not easy to remember, and to be honest, I really don't like the English-to-Chinese names, which makes people can't remember, especially if this is a game made by a Chinese team. But compared with the hard wounds in the plot, this problem is really insignificant.
A combination of 3D Galaxy Castlevania exploration and 2D side-scrolling battles
In Anno: Mutation, the player's lens perspective is fixed, the protagonist is a 2D paper man, but the scenes are modeled in 3D, and the characters will switch back and forth between 3D and 2D scenes.
The in-game map consists of more open areas that can only be explored by moving, and linear side-scrolling levels. In the area map, the player can travel freely. Although the level is a horizontal view, the map is very three-dimensional, the level has a clear galactic castlevania design, get a new key to go to the area you could not go before.
The 3D scenes in Anno: Mutation are mainly divided into two parts. The first is to focus on the world in the open area of the non-combat scene. The second is the 3D scene room interspersed in the 2D horizontal version of the battle, focusing on collecting resources, showing more screen details, and discovering information to promote the plot. Their combination allows the game to retain the 2D horizontal action while making the interaction and exploration diverse because of the 3D scenes, enriching the player's experience.
In the middle and late stages of several complete level maps, the game has changed the previous linear level and adopted the level design of the Galaxy Castlevania class. Organically connecting different areas makes the environment more compact and increases the explorability of the map. The design of galaxy castlevania in 3D is more difficult to design than 2D, but it can also be more diverse, more concentrated, and more encouraging for players to explore all areas, and it also makes it easier for players to have a sense of surprise during the playing process, and to harvest the satisfaction of exploring and getting corresponding benefits.
Combining 2D horizontal combat into the 3D Galaxy Castlevania level, the flattening of the battle tests the player's control ability, and the 3D stereoscopic level further enriches the player's sense of exploration. The combination of the two is indeed a fresh and bold attempt.
However, the combination of 3D and 2D in "Anno: Mutation" is disorderly, after converting from a 2D scene to a 3D scene, the player's thinking is still stuck in the 2D scene, and it is easy to be blocked after entering the 3D scene, which also requires the player to consciously take a detour to cross the obstacle. It seems insignificant, but it invisibly interrupts the player's flow.
Outside the small 3D rooms that are divided into separate parts, the battles and platform jumps are 2D side-scrolling scenes. This fragmentation brings the player a potential target to lose, completely separating the experience of different gameplay, which is equivalent to telling the player that you can only do these things in 2D and only do other things in 3D. Therefore, as soon as the player finds out whether the character is in 2D or 3D, he already knows what to do, which destroys the player's desire to explore.
In terms of level design details, the game still has something to praise. In order to avoid the player getting lost, the location of the minimap is very clear, and entering the room will become 3D to find the way. At the same time, the lens also intimately serves the scene performance, and cooperates with operations such as rotation to make the picture expression more impactful. Sometimes it also switches to a first-person view of the room to enhance the player's sense of substitution. Entering the indoor scene from the large map can be loaded instantaneously, and the flying car will be taken to different areas, and the scene loading screen will also fit the process according to the different transitions between specific scenes.
However, most of these designs only stay in the early stages of the game. At the beginning of the game, I thought that the process would be more open world exploration, but then I slowly found that the essence was still horizontal action, but it was a fusion of some open exploration gameplay. Under the poor feel of this game, the process of the middle and late stages almost turned into a disaster.
The thin feel plus the dung monster
The main gameplay of the game is a horizontal platform action, with both fighting and jumping. Usually the player moves freely in the 3D scene, but when fighting, they enter the 2D scene and fight with the enemy on a horizontal axis.
Let's not talk about the feel on the platform jump here, mainly talk about the problem of action combat, let's talk about why the feel of the game is so bad?
First of all, this is not a brainless game in battle, the game battle is more difficult, requiring players to use melee long-range defense rolling and other operations, with skills and props, flexible response to the enemy, but in general, melee attacks as the main output method.
Although there are many combat methods that can be selected, there are few functions that are easy to use and play well, and the actual combat experience is not good. For example, the defensive bullet anti-skill should be a flexible, risky but rewarding operation, but in the game not only slow movement, and most of the time can only prevent mobs, slightly stronger enemies can not defend and can not bounce back. The big sword is slow, long-range shooting can not control the direction and specific target, and will repeatedly shoot at a dead enemy, wasting ammunition.
And the upgrade of the attack skills are mostly useless, the charge attack does not dare to use too easy to stand in place to be beaten, the displacement attack skill is too large, the long-range attack is easy to be stiff, and the result is finally back to the back of the general attack to win quickly.
The range of the character's attack is also very mysterious, often feeling that the attack distance is almost the same, but repeatedly outputting air, even if it hits, it is difficult to interrupt the enemy's move. In particular, some enemies do not have a health bar and no damage value is displayed, and hitting the enemy will feel as if it has not caused substantial damage. The damage caused by the execution effect after hitting the enemy's shield is not considerable, and even some enemies have not been executed after hitting the shield.
After talking about the role of control, let's talk about the enemy. The enemies in this game are disgusting, and in most cases the enemy has a shield, which must be removed before it can cause damage to the enemy's health bar. Many times the amount of blood of the enemy is only a little bit worse, as if it can be killed immediately, but the shield is full and can only be hit again, and if the resources are not enough, it is really a mental explosion, and there is a big problem in the game's battle value design.
At the same time, the enemy's attack desire is high, and the moves are difficult to predict. Many elite monsters and bosses have brainless blood, resulting in many boss battles being more difficult. Enemy moves players are mostly difficult to react to, inexplicably killed by a set of consecutive deaths, dead without logic. Sometimes when playing bosses, there are additional mission objectives to make the battle one or the other. After playing the boss, there is no sense of accomplishment, only a long breath of relief after the hard grinding.
It is not so much a matter of difficulty as it is a flaw in the design. When the number of enemies is large, players are often difficult to deal with, only constantly hard to change blood. Sometimes in the case of a large number of drones and high-flying melee attacks can not be hit, it is even more difficult to control the rhythm of the battle.
There is no difficulty option in the game, and many times after death, you have to repeat the plot again, or go a long way, which makes people feel very frustrated, and if it is a handicapped party, it is estimated that it will really cry without tears.
Outside of combat, the platform-jumping experience is decent, and while there are levels that don't test reactions that aren't disgusting, it's a good experience compared to combat.
There are a lot of items on the map that can be picked up, and the items you pick up can be used for crafting or recycled. The process of looting takes a lot of time but the benefits are low, but when you don't loot battles, you often face the problem of insufficient resources. Another small problem is that some used props will still occupy the prop grid, making it very troublesome to switch props during combat.
By the way, I almost forgot about another transformation skill even in the game flow, and its presence is extremely low, because its maintenance time is too short, upgrades are too expensive, the first and middle periods are useless, so I almost forgot about it when I wrote this article, but who cares.
Plot, combat, and numerical planning can come and kowtow to an art scene
The atmosphere of the scenes in Anno Age: Mutation is immersive, and in the first two hours, it really made me experience well, discovered a lot of elements that could be explored, and made me full of expectations for the next process. However, the more you get to the back, the more you find that the production level is obviously declining, and players in the middle and late stages will spend most of their time in various closed levels in horizontal jumping battles. After the initial astonishment, it quickly becomes flat.
And the problems in the battle make me often feel unhappy during the game, and I just want to finish the game quickly and watch the plot. And it is precisely that the plot has given me a fatal blow to the end. The story that spreads too widely and is difficult to recover in the later stage makes the pattern narrower at once. The player is led the whole way like a marionette, knowing that he is very powerful but still has to be proud of the people who come out of nowhere. And these places add up to create a game where the pros and cons are obvious.
I can see that the production team still has some ideas, but I don't know whether it is a lack of experience, or the production cycle is too long, although the art of the game is really great, but the final game experience is not good. Can only look forward to the improvement of the production team in the later stage, at least for now I do not recommend buying, the road to domestic games is still a long way to go.
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Source: Game console fans