Quick Look: Crossing Souls

Nostalgia is the new new.

i dont fck wit no new hoes only old hoes

This is the first time I've actually seen this game in action, because anytime the devs or publishers show anything of it, it's some nostalgic VCR replica cartoon piece.

On that note - I was sort of done with the VCR thing back when GALAK-Z was doing it years ago but it seems to be popping up again in every other Devolver Game. I get it. VCR tracking. It was bad back then and it's bad now.

This is my current GOTY, showing you how much I’ve played this year so far...

How difficult is it to figure out you need to move the box down then jump on top of it? Holy hell.

And then he spends 5 minutes walking right past the object in the room the game specifically tells you you need to get. But yeah, it's the games fault right?

And then he spends ANOTHER 5 minutes running around looking for a key that's not hard to find at all? Just brutal.

Also, Bronson is a complete copy of British millionaire Richard Branson. It's pretty obvious by, you know, his name. And how he looks exactly like him.

Oh. For some reason I had it in my head this was some sort of Crossy Road/Dark Souls mashup. Now that I've actually typed that sentence I have no idea what that game/idea actually means or would look like.

Uuuughhhh.... those song titles are fuuuucking racist. If they didn't intend them to be, they failed.

Interesting game. Might pick this one up.

I read your comment before getting to that part of the video, and thought you were probably exaggerating... but yeah you're pretty right. I totally get that type of humor, and those jokes would probably go well in my friend circle... But man, what a dumb thing to put in a game lol.

Other than that, I don't think Ben gave this game a fair shake.

I'm not saying that some parts of this aren't a convoluted mess or that it doesn't have glaring issues or that the writing isn't highly questionable but watching Ben trying to play this made me feel genuinely sorry for the game and its devs. God damn.

Hey, does anyone else remember [old thing] ?!?!?

Well, nobody's perfect. And I guess this just ain't the stuff that dreams are made of.

Snap out of it! I'm walking here! I'M walking here! Even if you had said you loved the game it wouldn't matter. You can't handle the truth.

Time to look for another game I guess. Round up the usual suspects. After all, tomorrow is another day.

I want to be alone.

Rosebud,

It's got an interesting look (the gameplay, not the cartoon) but maaaaan.... that writing. Eeeyiiiikes.

Was somewhat interested in this before, but the style's a little too much. Let's see about it, if/when it becomes a PS+ game.

Also yeah, those animations/cutscenes are terrible looking.

Hey some things are just more obvious for different people. Like the way you presume the Bronson character reference to be Richard Branson, whereas i thought it was a reference to the famous mustachioed film and and television actor Charles Bronson, who was often cast in roles as cops.

What i'm saying is cut them both some slack , we all have some moments where we can't see the wood for the trees.

@percychuggs: Were you a developer on this game by chance?

@devoidmana: Why, because I think someone who has presumably played as many games as Ben has shouldn't need to spend 8 minutes running around trying to figure out that you need to jump on a box? That was Dean-Takahashi-playing-Cuphead-tutorial levels of bad right there.

Well, this seems aggressively lame.

The gamma bar doesn't look like something you can pick up. Maybe if I had seen one of those earlier in the game I'd be more likely to notice, but it just looks like part of the scenery. Also, the door says "there must be a way to open this," which would make me think I should be looking for a way to open that, not for a gamma bar.

Why does the principal's office have two drawers that make you say stuff about keys, but the actual key you need is in some random locker somewhere else?

And then when you get outside, you can send ghost Kevin into that tube that leads to where you need to go, but it's just arbitrarily treated as a dead end, until you send someone else there and then it does something. At least in the vent inside the school they bothered to put in an "I can't do that" message.

I don't think that I would enjoy this.

Sad to see these guys shitting on the game. I like the look and the gameplay, and I thought the 80s Saturday morning cartoon recorded on a VCR look was amazing.

It was really hard to watch Ben struggle with this game. The game wasn't even on my radar and now I am going to pick it up.

I don't think there is such a thing as 'Glam Stockton'.

@percychuggs: I mean, when Ben does find the item he literally says 'That one's on me' so...no he doesn't think it's the game's fault at all? It seems fairly clear that the problems he has with the game isn't that the puzzles are too obtuse.

I've been annoyed at them missing obvious things in QLs before too but there really wasn't much blaming the game for it this time.

The humor in this game is really bad ... and the gameplay doesn't look much better. Also nostalgia blood dragon did it best and wish it ended there.

@percychuggs: You might wanna chill?

Maybe I am just being harder on the game but I 100% a lot of the highlighting and puzzles in this game simply don't work the way the developers wanted them to. Such as that 5 digit code thing. I bet a very small amount of players actually do all the work and don't guess a single digit.

Ben certainly sounded like the problems were with the game itself and how it presented itself. Which granted the animations don't look amazing but for budget they don't look horrible.

Sadly I think the game's puzzle flaws are shown on their own here. As Ben says it's entirely his fault but you can clearly see he's not making any crazy or illogical thoughts. Jumping on the box, sure little rough there but things like keys and gamma bars blending into the background are more an issue of design than player. Additionally while we are only seeing one playthrough you can also ask how many people would play this and miss just one of these things, turn off the game and never turn it back on?

Getting people to buy your game is usually the first battle of getting people to play your game. Not the last step.

GBW can sure sap the fun out of something. How long do we spend running around looking for a key when it's in a locker immediately visible when Ghost Kevin walks through the locked door? He can't even read an officer's dialogue box aloud properly.

I thought Dan was exaggerating when he compared this to Ready Player One, but no, it's a bunch of lazy jokes and 80's references. This looks lame.

Just a wild guess here but maybe because they are racist as hell?

Some of the sprite art is nice but it seems like the design would cause me to make a lot of the same mistakes Ben did. Those offensive song titles are real bad too. Gonna skip this

I'm laughing so hard this game is a shit show lol the boss fight was too much

The games references are real bad. Not even like doing Nostalgia, its just like Family Guy references of "Hey remember that?" The song titles are fucking awful too and not funny. I was interested in this game because I follow Devolver and they keep tweeting about it, but this is a real off putting game.

@czircon: Yeah, the feedback in that gamma bar/door section was awful.

I was watching this while cleaning my room and totally missed the song title thing people are talking about. Just went back to that part to look at it, and... jesus christ.

I dunno I think this game looks pretty awesome. Those references are a bit lame tho.

Or you know, Ben can like and dislike whatever he wants.

Really glad this game was covered I was going to buy this but very much won't be now! Thanks as ever duders!

Every Quick Look comment section.

Boy those 80s sure were something huh? Hey have you seen Stranger Things?

this, and wow the comment section on quick looks is pretty bad lately.

this sucks
(edit: not the quick look, the game itself)

those song titles are something else

I was surprised Ben said he didn't like the game, and then i kept watching lol. Man, looks like they put a lot of work into it but maaaan that is some bad writing, gameplay doesn't look good either. I like the art style at least.

This is the game that Kang and Kodos from the Simpsons would make.

I would argue some of the character design and storytelling scaffolds for the narrative indicate the developer was tone-deaf. I mean, there's a mystical Chinese man owns an antiques shop and introduces the kids to the world of ghosts.