Ten years of grinding a sword, "Anno Mutation" was finally officially released this month, as a powerful pigeon of domestic games, and the heartwarming "Wind Country" next door echoed, after the latter was released in September last year, temporarily confirmed the record of the longest development time of domestic games.
The game was first announced in 2017, and then selected for Sony's "China Star" program, which not only means technical help, but also more exposure, more importantly, with Sony's official endorsement, to some extent, it is also a recognition of the quality of the game. Of course, there will be a little "cost", you must log in to the PlayStation platform, however, for domestic manufacturers, Sony is still more benevolent, as long as the so-called "host exclusive", there is no need to limit the PC platform - this is of course also taking into account the domestic host and PC ownership relationship, and refer to Sony's current handling of its own first-party and "second-party" games, perhaps whether it is completely exclusive is not a problem that Sony cares about.
At that time, "Uncle Wuren" was still a national dialectist
Looking at the list of participants in the "China Star", it is not difficult to find that in addition to the large factory works that have withdrawn (do not want to log on to the PS), the rest of the domestic games are basically good at jumping tickets, space FPS competition "Border" from 2019 to the present, "Lost Souls" is a regular visitor to the trial area of CJ every year, "Suzuran Project" is strongly intercepted by "Destiny 2", and domestic games have done the construction period of AAA masterpieces one by one, and the difficulties behind it can be imagined.
The art style of pixel + HD depth of field is eye-catching
In fact, the most interesting scene of this work is this first sight
Back to this work, there are several keywords: pixel painting style, cyberpunk theme, SCP fandom, I have to say that these elements were placed before 2017, which is undoubtedly a fashionable and novel pioneer field, and in 2022, five years later, it has become the main battlefield of the game industry, and even fierce competition. Of course, this is not a blessing, and the well-prepared "Era Mutation" should be more likely to stand out.
On the first day after the release, the media and self-media that tried to play in advance of the advance review were not lacking in praise, the first impression of the game was enough to score high scores, and as more and more players advanced the game, the rating of the store page took a sharp turn, as of today, the praise rate is only 65%, presumably many players will look at the game again and again after browsing the "shocking" message area.
Pat flat or even smash the 2077
What should a Cybertron-themed video game look like? CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 left a deep notion, and the excessive publicity indirectly harmed itself, and even affected Era Mutation, although the development of the two games was born at different times.
Neon lights and damp light and shadows The art team captured the sexiest side of Cybern's vision
In 2077, we saw a huge megacity, countless adventures and adventures, as well as a wealth of systems and treasure drops, and it seems that only a framework for a future version of gta can hold the spiritual core of Cybern. The game was originally positioned in a similar way to 2077, when the protagonist wakes up from an apartment building and faces another commission that requires his head to be pinned to the waistband of his pants, walking through the streets of the bustling city center to investigate the conspiracy.
The news broadcast at the time of reading the picture is very clear about what it means to flatten 2077
The game also designs a large number of interactions and dialogues, depicting the faces of sentient beings under the worldview from the side, most of which have nothing to do with the protagonist's story, but together constitute the details of this world. At the same time, vending machines can buy some recovery medicines that are better than nothing, and it also makes people feel that what will follow will be a complete and fulfilling game. And it all happens in a neon world of 2D pixels with a huge depth of field, which is desirable. At the beginning of the game, including the publicity stage, the player's imagination is a flat 2077.
The dog boss in a rather awkward tone is reminiscent of the dolphin watching the fur film in "Memories of Johnny"
But after the pre-game tutorial, we'll soon realize that the volume of content that doesn't match the framework at all. The game's battle scenes only appear in the main level, and all the branches are repetitive dialogues in the form of running errands. The reward for side quests can be some materials and equipment, but the equipment is often changed for data, there is no more gameplay reward, such as rocket artillery, two-stage jump, pad step teleportation and other key improvements, has been used in the main story. The increase in data is difficult to feel by the enemy difficulty of the main level, as each enemy can only be challenged once. When players lose positive feedback on big worlds and side stories, the game shrinks into a primitive 2D platform action game.
No leveling, no construction, the RPG part of the game becomes thin, and the battle scene seems to be an arcade game. The free-moving areas in the city are far less large than the battle areas, just like the towns in Diablo games, and the dungeon content is too big and too long, and even needs to be placed into the Dark Souls-style save teleportation point to ensure that the player returns to the city to trade and prepare in the middle of the main line adventure. In the second chapter, the dungeon, the map structure becomes Metrovania's box court design, through the door lock and the regional space connection, unfolding a level without teleportation points, the whole level design is chaotic, people just want to quickly get rid of the fight and maze exploration.
The flattening of the art brings surprises and strangeness, but it is difficult to play the same function of the flattening, and when the lightweight rolling mill is lifted, the game has become a tasteless tablet.
A story of hard-wired kings in the background of hunting
The various flaws in the gameplay can actually be explained as the sacrifices made by the production team in order to tell a complete story, and the player can understand that for a small-scale work, there are detailed and slight performances, but as long as there are some specialties worth remembering, it is enough to become a masterpiece worth trying. For example, "Lacuna", which we talked about last year, does not even need to fight, the whole process of running errands and dialogue, with a simple performance to set off the atmosphere, tells the story of an idealist full of betrayal and helplessness.
"Anno Mutation" can show more space in this regard, the Saipeng theme represents the dark end of civilization of human nature, and SCP is about a group of people who are still fighting against unknown forces at the end of the day. Defeating incomprehensible supernatural monsters and protecting this dimly lit world with a glimmer of light can be a touching story. However, the plot of this game makes the foundation side of evil, hunting down the protagonist everywhere, and the player has to fight to save his loved ones and maintain his family. SCP containments have become a means of factional struggle within the Foundation, into monster pawns without self-will.
The 682 Uncle at the peak of his combat strength becomes a simple beast in the story
The main story of the game includes a protagonist with amnesia, a son-in-law style after retrieving his memory, and finally returning to love and justice, these bridges are the same as ordinary king-of-the-road JRPG stories, and it is difficult to reflect the heavy baggage represented by the two major themes of SCP + Saipeng.
The Madonna ending makes it difficult to bring the plot of the game into it. When the plot of "The Last of Us 2" collapses, we find that the player naturally has emotional sustenance for the character after a series of adventures with the protagonist of the story, at this time the rational right or wrong is no longer important, the player needs an image that dares to love and hate, not a schizophrenia that loves and hates. Spoilers are not detailed, but a lot of feedback points to the sense of substitution of the characters, and the decisions made by the protagonists are too ordinary. The text that fills the story relies on the lily between the two protagonists, making the tone of the story more frivolous and casual.
The unfolding of the virtual idol being a foot-stomping man seems to have been fixed
SCP or urban weird theme of the game in the past two years has also repeatedly entered the room, commendable such as Remedy's "Control", the use of psychic, time and space travel and other American drama-style techniques, showing strange and strange supernatural power, small volume such as the sequel of "Brain Leaf Company" "Ruin Library", the plot began to let players run a "Dragon Gate Inn", open a black shop against multinational companies that have mastered the core technology, open a Pokémon Elf Dojo in a screw shell, which is also enough to hunt. This game uses hunting as a simple spice, and the protagonists and girls who want to do things in the main line appear to destroy the world, but these strong settings are naturally avoided, and there is no brain hole that turns the world into a cat litter basin and the like. The elevator pursuit side quest made many players giggle a little, but they didn't expect that this original side story would become the pinnacle of the entire game.
The large black background gives a great sense of oppression, but the text is still a bit dramatic
The mysterious death of the next-door neighbor, the suspect escaped into the elevator without a trace, the familiar apartment building seems to be in a time dilemma, according to the password of the deceased's room into the elevator floor, found the mentally disturbed murderer, whether it is revenge or murder, and then open his eyes to his own prejudiced righteous courage as a model citizen, the murderer disappeared, and the murder scene was unrecognizable. The absurd story comes to an abrupt end, the invisible force is around, and the protagonist does not dare to ask more questions, nor does he dare to think more. In fact, if the whole story is this form of detective story, forming a large network that reveals the protagonist's past memories, such a story is also very cheesy, but at least full of points of view.
Game language is also a spiritual carrier
With the expectation that there may be a god turnaround, the author has spent a long and short 15-hour process, after all, the game development cycle is quite long, and since the production team has the courage to promote such a project that does not consider commercial at all, there should be a lot of self-expression. But unfortunately, in the end, I only found that the work catered to the most vague audience portraits - I liked the two-dimensional art, cute characters, some facial characters, and the suspense of the end.
After the release was violently attacked, the production team came up with a set of solutions, including: vicious bugs and visual bug fixes, optimized combat actions, enhanced protagonist performance, and modified endings. After seeing this plan, it was actually announced that the game would be difficult to improve.
Of course, we can say that the experience of domestic game developers in these story-driven games is still shallow, and the original DQ and FF plots are equally complex, if "Era Mutation" can be developed to five generations and ten generations, who is better and who is inferior is still unknown. But in fact, regardless of whether the player will give this opportunity and time trial and error, it is difficult to turn the game into reality just by the original intention of developing it. I still hope that many game developers may wish to think a little more when deciding on a title.
Does the gist of what I want to convey need to be presented in the form of a video game?