Grounded

2024-11-16
First of all it's a gorgeous game. The low poly vibe to the whole thing paired with great lighting will have you staring at things beads of water forming on blades of grass. And it's delightful in all the right ways. Playing as shrunken kids marveling at the perspective shift, observing the world from tiny eyes is wonderful. The first time you see all the different bugs and marvel at their size and ferocity is incredible.

As a group it's also great. Taking down basic bugs and then really having to work together to take down the more formidable enemies like spiders. And oh boy our first wolf spider, man. The wolf spiders are fucking terrifying. Definitely a highlight of 2023 for me.

But then you come to the survival crafting of it all. It's fun at first. You set up your base, you go on little adventures out together. But then you inevitably end up at a point where you can't win with the gear you got. Which means you gotta craft new gear. Which means grinding to get the materials. What was fun, whimsical exploration quickly becomes methodical, painful, and repetitive farming of materials. Adding insult to injury, dying means you drop your materials and then you have to trudge your way back to where you died to pick up your shit and get it back to base. The map isn't that big but it's big enough that this could mean a 10 minute round trip for dying. That's pretty awful. Why is there no fast travel? If you're going to make me grind for shit at least make it easy. Sigh.

After a while my friends got bored but I, being ever the compulsive, Finisher of Games, trudged on. And solo the game feels terribly balanced. I actually ended up using cheats to finish the game because even when I had the best gear in the game combat felt really, really hard. I don't know if every fight is supposed to be so prolonged or if it's just fully tuned to 4 people but it felt off. I mean seriously the final mission took me 4 tries and several hours to complete even with invincibility, super speed, and one hit kills. As a 33 year old man who's been playing games his whole life. In a game ostensibly targeted at children. That's wack.

Other than that the story and flavor is fun. Finding Wendell has turned himself into a wrinkled head in a jar is hilarious. All the 80s ness of it all is wonderful. I mean again I will say it is truly one of the best looking games I've ever played. I just wish I was 12 years old and had the 100-200 hours to sink into it because that's who it feels like it's geared towards.

A good game to dip into, marvel at all the cool bugs, and then probably don't finish, at least if you're playing single player.

2023-12-10
First of all it's a gorgeous game. And delightful in all the right ways. Playing as shrunken kids marveling at the perspective shift observing the world from tiny eyes is wonderful. The first time you see all the different bugs and marvel at their size and ferocity is incredible.

As a group it's also great. Taking down basic bugs and then really working together to take down spiders and especially our first wolf spider. The wolf spiders are fucking terrifying. It rules.

But then you come to the survival crafting of it all. It's fun at first, you set up your base, you go on little adventures out together. But then you inevitably end up at a point where you can't win with the gear you got. Which means you have to craft new gear. Which means grinding to get the materials. What was fun, whimsical exploration quickly becomes methodical, painful, and repetitive farming of materials. Adding insult to injury dying means you drop your materials and then you have to trudge your way back to where you died to pick up your shit and get it back to base. The map isn't that big but it's big enough that this could mean a 10 minute round trip for dying. That's pretty awful. Why is there no fast travel? If you're going to make me grind for shit at least make it easy. Sigh.

I actually ended up using cheats to finish the game once I was doing it solo and even when I had the best gear in the game combat felt really, really hard. It's oddly balanced. I don't know if every fight is supposed to be so prolonged or if it's because I'm single player but that feels off.

Other than that the story and flavor is fun. Finding Wendell has turned himself into a wrinkled head in a jar is hilarious. All the 80s ness of it all is wonderful. I mean again I'll say it again but it is truly one of the best looking games I've ever played. I just wish I was 12 years old and had the 100-200 hours to sink into it because that's how it feels like it's geared towards.

A good game to dip into and get a feel for and then probably don't finish. I mean seriously the final mission took me 4 trys and several hours to complete even with invincibility, super speed, and one hit kills.