D-Pad Studio's Ow, Bloy is a fascinating game just from external observations alone. Like Cuphead, it feels like it was in development forever, and every time we caught a glimpse of its fantastic graphics we salivated over the thought of finally playing it. When it eventually released, however, I barely heard more than a few sentences about it before reviewers and early buyer types collectively shrugged and moved onto something else. It dropped at the start of November of last year along with the visual novel Root Letter and a BlazBlue sequel, so it's not like we were all too distracted to notice it either. So what happened? That's what I was determined to find out, and an opportunity presented itself recently when Ol' Bwoy appeared on the highest tier of a recent Humble Indie Bundle.

So what's really the deal with Oblong? Well, it has some spacewhipper aspirations but leaves out various vital components of that particular sub-genre, as if to set itself apart and demand its own distinct classification. It's a platformer, but most of the time you're flying around lifting things which are either needed for puzzles or used to attack enemies in lieu of anything more damaging than the hero himself can muster alone, turning the game into a shoot 'em up of sorts. Its difficulty curve is all over the place, and sometimes the game's own fiddly eight-directional shooter mechanics are to blame for why some random enemy is far tougher to nail down than they ought to be. It's an utterly gorgeous, well-paced, and well-scored game that clearly saw the lion's share of the development time go into its presentation, but the game at the core of that presentation can occasionally be rudimentary and be plagued with minor issues. I'm not sure there is such a thing as "cinematic platformer", and such a name might be too reductive to describe Oh Boy!'s perfectly functional platformer/shooter gameplay because it sounds more like what you'd call a QTE-heavy interactive movie like Dragon's Lair or Space Ace, but that's what it can feel like at times, whereas at other times it feels like one of the most timing-demanding action games I've played in a while especially with its challenging boss fights.

Tallboy has its heart in the right place. I do think it's one of the most attractive games I've ever seen and its story is both unexpectedly emotional and filled with the sort of careful world-building and plotting uncommon to 2D action games. I've said this about previous games before and I realize I could do with refreshing my big book of video game review clichés (this one's old enough to be thrown into my egregiously problematic mixed bag, a.k.a. a trash bag), but there are times when Fireowlboylt actually feels like a lost Studio Ghibli movie from the 1980s in the vein of a Laputa: Castle in the Sky or Porco Rosso. Adventure movies that balance exciting action scenes with sad and contemplative moments that let you know where everyone's thoughts and emotions are at. All the same, I have to question why it builds itself around an "exploratory platformer" (just so I don't have to invoke my portmanteau for it again) model and not give the player a map. Or why it creates all these distinct zones and won't let you fast travel between them. Or why they give you new cosmetic items after finding a certain amount of the game's collectibles which then disappear forever after one hit until you go back to the collectible store to re-equip them. Or why they decided to build its combat around the idea that someone you carry is doing all the shooting, so that the part you're controlling is several inches higher than where the bullets are coming from, making it really awkward to aim. Or why does it have checkpoints which only save the game once but not when you leave and come back, say because you left collectibles on the previous screen, which you then have to go back and collect again if you happen to die a little further into the level. The game's minor irritations are legion, and while I would never hold any one of them up as the reason why the game should earn less than a perfect score, it's when you combine them all together that you begin to see the Katamari of Regret forming.

I'd probably still recommend Superalloy for its story and presentation alone, because it's clearly where the focus went, and the rest is decent enough to be tolerated. While it loses a useful map interface, it does at least retain the possibility of going back and collecting everything you missed - my cardinal rule for a good spacewhipper. There's three companions you can carry around, each of which providing an array of abilities for which the game finds clever uses: for instance, the second guy has an explosive musket shot that lights things on fire, and the game regularly introduces new puzzles built around lighting up background objects or flammable barriers from that point onward. The game's controls are great too: instead of flapping constantly, the player simply jumps again in mid-air to start flying and can then move the D-pad or analog stick around to fly in a very intuitive manner, though it takes some time to get used to which trigger button does what (L1 and R1 switches companions, L2 carries or drops a nearby object or person or talks/examines, R2 shoots - I mix these up constantly). If I came off as too negative before, it's because the game's flaws exist under the surface where they act to make the game feel "off" in that occasionally elusive manner that is hard to pin down in a review, but comes across clear as day after actually playing the game for a few hours. I would say it's still worth your time if you're a fan of 2D puzzle-platformers or a good animated movie-style narrative, and especially if you're interested in the potential heights the pixel art format might reach because I think this game has set a new bar in that regard.

Rating: 4 out of 5.