Recent reviews by Mein_Leben!

Very enjoyable if short game.

I'll start with the main criticism I've seen in reviews- the ending. I won't spoil it, but it isn't something grandiose, which is what gamers would expect. It's a very human ending, which is to be expected. This game isn't about a person going on a grand adventure full of peril, it's a story of someone who took a job as a firewatcher to escape from his life, and learned that it really isn't possible to do so.

My main criticism is with how some of the navigation works. The game railroads you into certain paths in order to find things in the right direction, which means lots of invisible walls stopping you from traversing terrain that looks completely easy to walk through. It bugged me a few times. Zooming into the map not automaticfally centering on my location was a minor but constant irritant.

With that said, they are minor gripes in a game that was fully enjoyable to play. I had to turn the graphic dteail down to suit my computer (upgrading soon... hopefully) but still it had a great overall look to it. The sound design was excellent, not only the soundttrack but the foley of footsteps and other sounds, plus solid voice recording.

You'll finish the game relatively quickly, but I'll be honest- I'd rather a shorter game I enjoyed than a longer game that I didn't. Like a good 90 minute movie, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was bad- it told the story it needed to tell in the time it had and it used the time well. That's the feel I have for this game.

I own Audiosurf 1 and decided to get the second mainly because of the updatd graphics and customisation the new version offers. There have been some changes though, and not all of them are good.

GOOD ASPECTS

The changes to the graphics is really nice, as the limited options in the first game got a bit stale after a while.

I love audiosprint, which is something that I wasn't even aware of until I opened the game up. It's a whole new experience ccompared to the regular game, and that is a very good thing.

Apparently the UI used to be terrible and was changed- the current one is quite good, making it possible to swap between modes and skins without being clunky.


BAD ASPECTS

Wakeboard. This is the ultimate in an idea that sounds good but really doesn't work in practice. I can't see myself using it.

Different skins seem to all have their own scoreboards. This is incredibly disappointing. I can understand mods that can affect how the game works doing this, but why skins as well? Maybe it will be changed when the game eventually is released.

How blocks are placed and their density has been changed. I understand why it was done- there were a lot of complaints that songs with large uphill parts were quite boring due to the low block densities they have. However it's gone too far the other way, where the placement of the blocks seem to have little correlation with the music, and the main thing the music influences being the track slope. This is disappointing, as it feels less like I'm riding my music and more playing a puzzle game with my music in the background.


Overall it is an enjoyable game, with my biggest gripe being the fiddling around with the block placement.

EDIT: OK so this is much later, and I'm coming to enjoy the game more. The ability to add mew modes is great and the changes they made to Audiosprint were good. The issues I had with the early access version aren't in the final version, especially regarding block placement. I maintain that it's superior to the first game, especially in the little details like layout and so forth.