02/06/2007 - Demo Review - Valdis Story

 

Valdis Story is the kind of game which, when I learn of their existance via a website, makes me want to touch myself in a way which most cybercafes frown upon.

These days I've managed to dull my instincts so that the mention of a new explorey platform game merely makes me issue a noise like Kenneth Connor seeing a leggy woman in a Carry On movie, but inside my love for this particular subgenre in as passionate as ever.

This is the loading bar. For a game that's less than 8Mb, you'll be seeing this chap for a surprising amount of time.

Of course there have been a few people who've tried to duplicate the magic of Metroid and the more recent Castlevania games in the indie scene with varying degrees of success. For every Cave Story there have been several Return Of Egypts and so in which list does Valdis Story fit so far?

There's something admirable about honesty in advertising...

Well, to be honest, it's kinda' straddling the pair of them at the moment. There is much goodness in it, but there's also a fair few elements which go against the grain of exploration.

First of all, the bit that matters, the gameplay. The control is a bit odd, really with your action keys spread all over the keyboard by default and no way to alter them. The main problem with the control is that if you're standing on the ground and attacking something, then you aren't moving because running and hitting are mutually exclusive. This really makes the combat feel clunky and has a knock of effect of meaning that most of the early enemies have very boring behaviour, standing around and shooting every few seconds or jumping occasionally. A bit later on there are some enemies which are more spry and which can jump all over the place and they're more interesting, except that you're still hampered by your own inability to run and attack at the same time. I'm sure that later in the game you'll get items and abilities which resolve this, but best foot forward, eh?

The other niggle is that in explorey platform games I always feel that if you can't get somewhere, there should be a reason, like a cliff-face or a spike-pit or something else which makes sense. But in Valdis Story there are several rooms that you simply can't walk off of the side of, despite there being no obstruction and for me that's at odds with how it should be. Likewise there are some pits you can drop into where you die at the bottom. Why do you die? No idea. I mean it ain't from the drop because you can fall as far as you like elsewhere. They also combine these pits with off-screen enemies who shoot at you and knock you as you attempt to jump over them. Good God, did we fight the great game design war of 1989 for nothing, people?!

But despite these problems, they have a very solid base to build on. You get experience from killing enemies with combos resulting in a higher yield, and you can then spend the levels you get from that experience on upgrading one of three statistics. There also appears to be room on the stats page for lots of skills and abilities to be learned, although there's not much evidence of that in the demo.

The enemy at the left just stands there and the two on the right move slower than my nan.
Note that I've cropped, rather than resized the screenshots to maintain the integrity of the pixel art.

On an aesthetic level, the graphics are very nice indeed. Some people have complained about the blend of pixel style graphics and the more photoshopped looking elements. Personally I've not had any problem with that at all - I think all the graphical elements hang together very well. The only complaint I can level at them is about the lack of background variety in order to differentiate the rooms more and break up the scenery.

However although the graphics are very nice, the way in which they are presented is less so, because I can only assume this is the first time the programmer has had the power of accelerated graphics at his fingertips such is his fetishistic obsession with making the display zoom in and out all the time. It's REALLY annoying that every time you enter a NEW ROOM the graphics start ZOOMED IN and then gradually zoom out to a normal view. And if you enter a room from the right-hand side it has to track untidily towards you while it zooms out.

Uh-oh, cutscene. Best put the kettle on...

The sound effects are mostly unremarkable but do the job, although it's a little odd how your character says kill each and every time you press the fire button. I think he's a psycho. The music, I'm not so keen on as it features cheesy midi-library style instruments and by the numbers composition.

In terms of presentation the real problem is just how long you have to wait for stuff to happen. There are frequent and tedious transitions and pauses and apparently one of the testers is the sl- slough? Oh, slow...est... re...reader... in... the... whorled? w-world... judging by how long the chapter names remain on screen. And, although this is the height of bitchiness, the intro is crap. Nice enough art, but it really does boil down to "abandoned child... blah blah blah... Dad's gone mad... blah blah blah... monsters". But at least it's skippable.

This is the first boss and that gauge at the top is his energy. When it's depleted it doesn't mean he's dead, merely that by all rights he should be and that he's about to kill you in a horrendously cheap manner.

So, overall it's a game with a lot of potential. It just needs someone a bit more objectivity to hit the programmers knuckles with a ruler whenever they get the urge to put in another zoom or pause.

Well worth downloading.

Graham

Source: Captain Tim