Quick Look: Song of the Deep

This looks like a perfect summer game.

I think of the deep south.

My thoughts, exactly.

I mean... Just the title of the movie. Nothing beyond that.

I will only buy this from Ross Perot.

Yesterday at Gamestop I witnessed a savage employee give another employee a long monologue on how Gamestop is in financial trouble and is banking hugely on the success of this game, and then watched him lie to a customer and his son, claiming that they had pre-ordered the game at a previous time, claiming "You put down 5 dollars on it, it's only 14 bucks to pay it off and pick it up. It's out today." And it worked! Made me feel ill.

This game looks cool.

@zombutler: The song remains the same.

Oh so this is like Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Also slightly disappointed that this isn't a GBEast QL but it's fine.

@d_w: Yeah, if this was GBEast, we'd get to hear Ross Perot's opinion on it.

After watching this quick look I got the impression that the game isn't bad Dan is just bad at playing it.

I wouldn't pay full price for it but maybe on a steam sale I would pick it up.

Unmechanical is the game Jeff was thinking of. Much better game than this. It was PS Plus a while ago.

"Ok gamestop employees, we are worried people will be wary of us publishing, selling and reviewing games. We need a name that evokes trust!"

"How about game trust?"

"Perfect!"

I'm kind of disappointed that opening the map seems to freeze everything going on around you.

They're still on vacation I think.

You know Chinese invented happiness? Inside a cookie, that's what we're doing here, putting happiness inside a box.

y cant song sing?

@basketsnake: I like to think that the song in "Song of the Deep" is the hectic spider-fighting music.

This game's mechanics look absolutely infuriating. I haven't played it but looking at Dan having to drag a thing around hoping it doesn't touch anything made me want them to just ragequit the game outright.

This seems like an extreme offender in bad game design. Not only you made your puzzles and exploration trial and error, you also made "the next try" extremely painful and slow. Apart from pretty artstyle, it looks like it is infuriating to play instead of calming.

I agree about Dan not being particularly good at the game, and being bad at something often leads to people not liking it, but some of his biggest complaints seemed spot on.

Whether something could be interacted with or not was often not clear, and moving objects around (like that mine) seemed a bit too imprecise for my liking. I didn't realize that crab had a shockwave ability until they mentioned it; the graphical representation of the shockwave was so understated.

That being said, I'm probably playing this. Insomniac has been a pretty good bet over the years.

This would be better as a GBeast QL with Ross Perot doing the commentary.

Definitely playing this. Love the aesthetic a lot, and the music/ambience seems quite good. As said above, i got a strong impression that this game simply wasn't right for Dan. That sort of thing happens, and isn't the fault of the game or the player.

That's literally a lantern run wtf

Criminal this isn't a GBeast Look

Not going to lie, this game looks super boring.

sorry, Ross Perot is on sabbatical

This reminds me a lot of Aquaria, except not as good.

This reminds me of "The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human", another sub-based underwater Metroidvania. It's pretty good.

Edit: I think I know how you get that barrel to stall on the platform. Physics. Just push it more gingerly.

Edit edit: Okay, nevermind. :P

This bomb shit looks INSUFFERABLE

Not Ross Perot as well?

Also @tordah this also looks to me like Aquaria but not as good. Reminds me I really need to get Aquaria at some point, just it never ever goes on sale so I forget about it.

Man, this would have made for an awesome sequel to Kaitei Daisensou/In the Hunt!Would have preferred that!

Seems like a solid "OKAY" game for what it is. I don't really think it's for me, though. It'll be interested to see how it does, what with Gamestop throwing themselves so hard into promoting this.

Looks fine. The puzzles didn't seem to click with Dan so I doubt he'd like it, but from time to time I enjoy a nice, slow, easy game that's pretty. I'll probably give this a shot.

It was killing me that they kept missing the giant enemy crab's glowing weak spot, that you obviously hit for MASSIVE DAMAGE. Am I reading too much into that, or is this joke not dead yet?

Also, weird out of place GoT reference in the trophies?

Looks boring.

I could do without that horrible naration.

Giant underwater spider or spider crab?

@damaramu said:

Man, this would have made for an awesome sequel to Kaitei Daisensou/In the Hunt!Would have preferred that!

But that's not a metroidvania, that wouldn't fit... And hell, In The Hunt was made by the people who went on to make Metal Slug, right?

Did you know the Chinese invented happiness?

Wonderful.

Hmm? He was thinking of an Insomniac VR game in the works, which he said the name of a minute later, The Unspoken.

@yummytreesap: Ahh, my mistake. Think I just had Unmechanical on my mind as it's such a similar game. Thanks for the correction :)

Swisher

Excuse me?

"This time we go even deeper."

I didn't get my pre-order bonus for this quick look. I was promised a gold skinned video player.

@d_w: Yeah, when I first saw it, it just reminded me that I never got around to that game.

Dan says it feels floaty. Isn't that how it's supposed to feel since it's underwater?

I'm pretty sure he didn't mean that as something negative on its own. He was making an argument that the game is kind of hard to play for the wrong reasons, it 'obviously being floaty' makes it worse when the game asks you to do certain things.

I haven't played this game, but I can see what he is trying to say. To me, there is a real difference between not making a jump in Mirror's Edge because you misjudged it, and grabbing a bomb and having it go off on the walls. That part alone made me not want to play this. It's not a fun type of trial and error in the sandbox they made.

Sure, but that's probably not a good thing when the game is requiring precise control a bomb that will blow up at the slightest touch of a wall.

Never mistake: I love a good Jeff and Dan Quick Look, but I can't be the only one hoping the Beasters would take this one and we'd get the return of Gamestop Ross Perot...

This reminds me a lot of a less visually interesting Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.