She’s a voidrunner, meaning she explores black holes with the help of advanced technology. But when it all flows, its core 3D platforming is fast, fun and effortless to play and quite easily the best 3D Sonic game we’d really like to see in the future.Rei awakens, dazed and confused within the Ultravoid. Solar Ash’s breathtaking scale doesn’t quite match up to Shadow of the Colossus or indeed the developer’s terrific debut, a bit too familiar while not quite having the emotional resonance it aims for. And of course, the traversal ultimately goes a very long way. These haunting pockets of silent cinematic poetry linger longer in the mind than the game’s heavy-handed script. Instead, Solar Ash is more memorable for the breathtaking vistas it conjures, like the way the camera occasionally pulls back to provide a real epic sense of scale showing your own vulnerable insignificance or in the moments when you’re grinding up to the heavens. In contrast to the enigmas open to interpretation in Shadow of the Colossus or even Heart Machine’s own Hyper Light Drifter, which had its own glyph language you needed to learn to decipher, Solar Ash ends up overexplaining itself and also touches on some overly familiar plot points that don’t land as well, with one twist feeling a bit done to death of late. Partly it’s down to the execution, such as how its sense of otherworldliness is undercut by voiced dialogue that sounds just too contemporary American (one character whose logs you find throughout the game is especially grating) when no talking would’ve been preferable or perhaps a fictional language. There’s nothing wrong with a game that’s good to play just once, but once you stop to take it in, its story doesn’t linger and despite its heavy themes on grief and pain while reckoning with pending doom, it lacks the emotional resonance of its influences like Shadow of the Colossus. But unlike Sonic, it’s not as replayable, with some rather underwhelming optional collectibles and lore, though we suspect given its tight platforming mechanics, it’s likely to attract speedrunners looking to break the game with eye-watering completion times. Keeping with its fast breezy pace, Solar Ash is a fairly short game at about six hours, which feels wise so as to not outstay its welcome. It sure makes for more exhilarating encounters than the rote three-hit boss fights of a 3D Mario game. It would be one-note if it didn’t feel so great in its sense of flow as you master the demands of traversing these mini race courses. The same mechanic applies to taking down the Massive Anomalies then, which unlike the Colossi of Shadow of the Colossus isn’t about figuring out a weak point, because you’re just essentially doing the same thing over and over again. A gauge at the bottom alerts you to the sometimes tight time limit you have to reach the next point before it resets, while a climbable oily black substance that usually surrounds these areas also turns to lava, taking a bite of your shield points if you make contact. To take on these latter Anomalies however, you must first stir them from their slumber by cleansing a number of corrupted nodes on the map in what amounts to mini-races around the environment as you slash at spiky checkpoints before reaching the end to stab at the final exposed nerve, which you might liken to some kind of large-scale acupuncture. Its headline setpieces are the Massive Anomalies taking various beastly forms that feel like platforming levels themselves. Instead, traversal is kept as the game’s very singular core, even as it occasionally changes things up with different puzzles and environmental hazards. Jet Set ColossusĪlthough you could say there’s combat in Solar Ash, as Rei whips out an energy blade to hack-and-slash biomechanical enemies known as Anomalies, it rarely feels like combat. The verticality of levels are also designed with generous checkpoints while you’ll usually open up a shortcut that saves you the hassle of finding your way back up should you slip up. It’s not always perfect – the platforming is at its best when it keeps up the momentum out in the open areas rather than cramped interiors – but some of the exactness required is alleviated by being able to enter a timeslip, which slows down the action giving you time to reposition the camera to grapple onto distant points or enemies. Where Solar Ash succeeds from Sega’s mascot is that it’s largely devoid of the frustrations that come with such agility.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |