Day Nineteen
- Game: Apotheon (Alientrap).
- Release Month: February.
- Source: The Steam Explorer Sale.
- Quick Look: Here. (Drew/Brad)
- Started: 15/12.
I haven't given up on Apotheon yet, which should at least tell you something about its comparative strengths and weaknesses. I do still find its combat a bacchanal tangle of oily limbs and pointy objects, and I'm still not enamored with its endurance-based weapon system and the frequent necessity to replace weapons - even the rare, powerful ones - every few minutes because you absentmindedly used the mighty Forge Hammer of Hephaestus to open one too many crates for their handfuls of loose drachma and potion reagents until it shattered, like divine artifacts are known to do.
However, I don't dislike Apotheon. I think its presentation is top-notch, some animation roughness aside, and I'm beginning to appreciate how varied it is now that I've (almost) completed three of its scenarios. While Apollo - the one deity I'd managed to slay as of yesterday - was a classic "get dropped in the dungeon, make your way out, recover all your equipment, sabotage some defenses and take down the boss" scenario, the ventures into the underworld of Hades and the forest of Artemis have been decidedly different. One involved four specialized obstacle courses, each with their own theme, while the other presented a wide-open area within which you're meant to complete a set of objectives. There's a limit to how much you can diversify missions in a 2D action-platformer game like this, but I admire that the game's taking steps to vary it up as frequently as it can. That's true for the color schemes too: because the intro, the hub areas of Mt. Olympus and Apollo's Palace all had the same bronze and black color scheme, I had assumed the same was true for the rest of the game. Hades, in fact, has a very melancholy blue and gray palette while Artemis's lush forests have a decidedly viridian hue.
I do think its mapping could use some tweaking. For one, areas in the dark do not appear on the map, even if you were to pass through them with a lit torch or some other means of illuminating the darkness. This makes determining where you are, where you've been or where there's still left to check nigh impossible. Platforms are often missing from the map despite being there clear as day, maybe even being stood upon while perusing the map, and it often feels like the map graphics were based on an earlier version of the game's actual environment.
Apotheon really just continues like that. Every strength has a flaw; every weakness has its charm. A comment left on yesterday's blog called Apotheon the quintessential three-star game and I'd have to agree, though I don't concur with their second observation about it being an immediately forgettable game. I will certainly remember Apotheon after tomorrow, whether or not I manage to complete it within the three day limit, but in the same partition of my brain that contains something like Remember Me: a game that is ambitious, visually and stylistically distinctive and more or less competently made but with just one too many ideas that didn't pan out the way anyone would hope.
Still have one day left to change my mind though. See you tomorrow.
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