A look into Skyrim issues (before 1.4)

 

One of the games that I have made time for is the one that was on top of most people's game of the year lists. As you probably guessed, that game is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I have had a ton of fun with it, from exploring the world to completing the quests. For me, the game delivered on its promise in providing a huge, enjoyable world, and I don't regret buying it.

That's not to say that the game is without its faults. As with most Bethesda games, it has a rather large array of bugs and a handful of exploits (like putting bucketsover people's heads so you can steal stuff/kill people). The bugs were generally harmless, with some of them being addressed in the 1.2 and 1.3 patch. However, a few other bugs popped up in 1.2 that made players take notice more so than usual. This included dragons that flew backwards and were generally impossible to kill, and magic resistance being nearly removed fromthe game entirely. This sparked a lot of complaints from the customer base, and for good reason: killing dragons is a major part of the game and magic resistance is important for pretty much every adventurer. The complaints started to branch from these issues onto other things people didn't like about the game. This included complaints that the game breaks immersion too often, the quests are broken, the PS3 version is messed up like most Bethesda games, and also commenting on how the QA team must be terrible for not catching the issues that appeared with patch 1.2. This got me thinking about the complaints. Are most of these justified? Let's look at some of these complaints at different angles.

Breaking immersion too often

There are times while playing a video game that you are so into it that you almost forget you are playing a game and even forget things around you, like other people, needing to eat, or bathing. This is called immersion. Bethesda believes that Skyrim excels in this aspect of gaming. However, some claim that there are too many things in the game that break immersion. One complaint I came across had to do with the giants knocking you up extremely high into the air, completely ignoring the normal laws of physics (or those that exist in the game’s world). I recall hearing that this was left in the game because the developers and others found it amusing, and apparently some players even requested these kinds of things. They thought most players would enjoy this since the character physics would also go ragdoll in the process and looks comical. I've never had it happen, but I've seen clips of it and found it amusing myself. Besides, I'd be dead and tapping the button to reload my game anyways. One could easily argue that the load screen breaks immersion when a player dies, so why complain about that breaking the immersion since the player will die anyways? Maybe if the player was not about to die it’d be an issue, but if they are dead when they fly up in the air, then it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Immersion breaking due to glitches in the game, on the other hand, can be very annoying and to some a big deal. Though they are problematic, I have yet to play a game today where a glitch or game mechanic did not break immersion for me. For this game the issue is likely the frequency that it's broken than the simple fact that immersion was broken. All games do it, but considering the complexity of the game worlds in all of the Elder Scrolls games, there is far more possibilities of immersion being broken. Knowing the massive virtual worlds and complexity of a Bethesda game like this (or any other similar game where NPCs have “lives” and routines), a player should go in expecting immersion to be broken often. Yes it can detract from the game, but in my experience it hasn't happened often enough to affect the level of fun that I have had.

Despite all this, it is on the developers to correct design issues, glitches, and bugs that break immersion before and after launch. At the same time the consumer must understand the level of complexity that is in this game and how both machines and programming work. A game such as Skyrim can enter millions of possible states during a normal play through, with every action the player takes possibly changing the path to a certain state, or the state of the game altogether. This being the case, a team cannot conceivably test every angle of a newly implemented feature during testing and still release the game in a timely manner. Unfortunately this results in the team having to make sure it works most of the time and then move onto the next thing. That's how a lot of bugs either get missed or even get ignored for launch. If they don't affect gameplay enough to stop them from launching, it won’t get fixed, even if they don't realize that it'll affect the majority. It could have only shown up for 1 of 10 testers, so they OK'd it for launch and had to move on to something else. Other games are usually not as complicated, and a level of abstraction and testing around it is enough, but for a game like this it's likely never going to be enough, and there will always be bugs that will be ironed out over time. As long as the majority of the time the game is enjoyable, it should be passable.

I will, however, argue in favor of the consumer when it comes to quest issues.

At least you get a good view of the landscape.

Broken quests

Put simply, there are a ton of quests in Skyrim. Like most games of this type, it’s the main source of content. The problem is that there seems to be more quest issues than there are any other issues, or at least during my time with the game. These are probably the most annoying since there are quests that become impossible to finish if they glitch. I have come across a fair number of these. One example that I came across was a quest where the player investigates a murder that occurred in town. It was a pretty interesting quest, but there were so many possible ways to glitch the quest that would prevent the player from ever finishing the quest AND would prevent an item from ever leaving your inventory. It was so bad that I decided to keep a walkthrough of the quest up to be sure I didn’t cause any of the glitches to occur, which takes a lot of fun out the quests. One of the glitches was incredibly easy to cause: simply walk up to a door before you actually need to and suddenly some quest related flags are reset and you can never finish the quest. This will likely be fixed in 1.4, but it seemed like such an obvious set of bugs to fix. Another example of quest issues pertains to all 3 side-quests for the Bard's College where you fetch items for other members. When you finish the quest, the items are never removed so it takes up 10 weight in your inventory forever. Some miscellaneous quests even stay in the list despite being completed. I have 2 items in my miscellaneous log saying to get my bounty reward from Skald though he has nothing for me; I had already completed those and collected my bounty.

Outside of the Skald bounty issue, I wonder how most of these issues got around testing. Though the game can go into a million states, the majority (not all, but the majority) of quest objectives revolve around getting items or going to certain spots, and the completion often removes items, which can't be removed by dropping, selling, or storing since they are quest items. This should be a very easy thing to setup while creating the quests, and very easy to notice while testing. Though I do know from personal experience that very minor changes in one section of code can change the behavior of seemingly unrelated sections of code, it still seems odd that these were missed. These also greatly break immersion and can turn some quests into chores, and can even discourage aspects of gameplay. One quest had me going to gather journals, but it wanted me to grab a specific one first. This was in a set of ruins with multiple parts, so I wanted to explore a bit before going to the quest object, which caused me to find the other journals before the first one. When I finally grabbed the first one, the game didn't realize I had gathered the other journals and wouldn't allow me to finish the quest. I had to go back several save files and try again just so I could finish the quest. This is not only broken immersion, but tedious and a waste of time.

Some of these issues of things can sneak past testing, but the multitude of objectives not clearing the log, items not being removed from the inventory, and the objectives getting mixed up to a point where they break quests often is a bit much. This doesn't just break immersion; it keeps the player from completing content. This is far worse than humorous bugs or other minor immersion breaking issues, and should be fixed faster than any other issues since they are gameplay-breaking bugs.

 The blood on the ice nearly went unsolved because I walked up to a door.

Speaking of which...

QA missing the new bugs in patch 1.2

When the 1.2 patch landed, many were happy that a good number of bugs would be fixed. Though it did do that, it also introduced 2 major ones: backward flying dragons and nearly no magic resistance. These were major gameplay killing bugs and Bethesda was pretty on top of getting a patch out (though some of us on consoles had to wait longer for the certification process). The question that a lot of people asked is "How did QA let these bugs past?" Though they can be viewed as obvious bugs, there may be a reason these were overlooked.

Reading comments from angry/annoyed players, I get the feeling that the QA process is a little unknown. The general idea is correct: the dev team(s) writes the software or fixes bugs, gives it to the QA team, and the QA team tests what the dev team created. The main reason this doesn’t work that well is time. Whenever development falls behind for any reason, QA time is what gets sacrificed to meet a deadline. Obviously this means that bugs get through, and the consumers are the ones to find them. This isn't the best excuse, but it is a reality of the video game industry (and probably the software industry in general) in today’s world; deadlines will always be more important than QA time.

On top of that, there is the difference between testing patches and testing a game under development. Depending on the time restraints, QA may just check to see that the error/bug they are testing for is gone based on the solely on the steps to reproduce. If the steps fail to reproduce the issue, they may or may not try other things to make it sure the bug is truly squashed. They go in, check it off, and move on. They may also be using pre-created characters that are maxed out to move through areas more quickly and seamlessly, as they don’t have time for a group of people to play 100 hours worth of the game. This is great for time crunches, but it makes it more likely that the average consumer will find an issue instead of the QA team. Also remember that a small code change in one spot can drastically change another, and if they aren't looking outside of the test parameters they may not see a new issue. Add the complexity of this kind of game mentioned earlier, it becomes exceptionally hard to find any cascading bugs. Since QA may not have had a lot of time, or since not all of the dragons flew backwards and the bugs may have had nothing to do with dragons or magic resistance, they may have overlooked these issues and OK’d it for release.

They pretty much never landed.

However, these were big issues, and maybe a few more tests should have been done despite time. I think we all would have been happier to wait a little extra time and have had these bugs found and fixed than to go through about a month of no magic resistance or dragon killing. However, it could also have been development’s fault more so than QA. This is possible since it can take awhile to produce a patch. Also, today's gaming crowed is extremely demanding. They want things fixed now, and they want it working perfectly in no extra time. Unfortunately we can't have both.

PS3 Issues

As many Bethesda fans know, you likely don't want the PS3 version of their games. It's usually filled with bugs and glitches that the other versions don't have. My experience with the PS3 version of Skyrim was met with a ton of bugs, but none you couldn't find in the other versions. The only problem that is in the PS3 version and not the others are the lag spikes a player gets while playing, which would occasionally be so bad that the frame rate would drop to 0. Bethesda claims things like the PSN+ auto save upload feature, the AI, and the caching system (quicker access to information by storing it in an easy to grab location), and the lack of memory the PS3 has versus other platforms. But what's really to blame?

The PSN+ auto save uploading could slow things down if it runs while you're playing, but those who don't run that still have the same slowdowns. The AI issues and the caching system are possible reasons as well, but the other versions don’t see any real performance issues that I’m aware of. The PS3, however, does have the smallest amount of memory available across all the versions. Not only does the hardware itself have less memory, but the PS3’s XMB operating system (OS) eats up a lot of it (it has 256MB available and the OS uses 43MB, which is 18.75% ofthe console’s memory, and this doesn’t include video memory that’s eaten up bythe OS). This doesn't give a lot of room for developers to use. For Skyrim's giant world a lot of memory is needed to keep track of everything, perhaps more than your normal console games, and the more the player does in the game the more that the system needs to keep in memory. The problem is probably centered on what the game does when it has no more memory to access: it has to clear things out of memory to put new things in. It starts to become a huge bottleneck, and it becomes even worse when it starts pulling more and more data off the hard drive or disc drive. In terms of accessing data, those are the slowest, so that causes a huge performance hit every time it needs to access it. The lack of memory, along with the possible lack of testing to see if the new engine was handling the memory correctly on the PS3, is probably why the PS3 version of the game has more issues more performance issues.

Though the PS3 does lack in memory, I would still say this does fall a bit on Bethesda. Though they probably had to drop QA time in favor of meeting the launch date and the game can be in tons of states due to how the game is played, knowing the issues they’ve had in the past with PS3 games they should have spent far more time stress testing the system and the engine’s ability to handle it correctly. It’s unfortunate that this oversight has caused such a huge issue for PS3 players, and Bethesda should have spent a little more time focusing on testing on the PS3.

I spent a lot of time admiring the landscape while exploring.

Wrapping it all up

Overall, I would have to say that a good amount of the complaints are justified. There were a lot of issues in Skyrim that detracted from the overall experience, and all that were overlooked by Bethesda for whatever reason. However, the consumer should realize that the level of complexity and the shear amount of content in the game will cause a large number of bugs, and pitchforks and torches are only necessary if there’s no patch for months after launch (I’m looking at you Fable II). All things considered, millions of people still played it for an enormous amount of hours; so many hours that it became the #1 most played game of 2011… and it was only out for one month out of the year! So does it have its justifiable faults? You bet, but it’s still a great game that’s going to be patched up over time and will become even more enjoyable with each one.

…By the way Bethesda, could we have a save game patcher available from the main menu? That would be amazing!

I haven't forgotten!

Greetings again, everyone!

First off, I hope everyone had some great Christmas-time holiday merriment. Whether you celebrate the holiday or not, I hope that the time has been restful, full of good food, and plenty of time doing the things you enjoy (hopefully gaming related)!

I also want to apologize for the long time between posts (3 months). I really was not expecting to be as busy as I was. Let's catch up a bit.

Back in early October I went to the SIEGE 2011 conference. It was a small conference, and I met a great group of people. A fair number of them played the game that myself and the guys of Digital Roar Studios are currently developing called Ascension Imperium (it is in single player beta that you can play here if you're interested). We gained some positive feedback, as well as some constructive criticism on things to fix. I also got to meet Ellen McLain (voice of GlaDos from Portal) and John Patrick Lowrie (voice of Sniper from Team Fortress 2). They were absolutely great to talk to, and I wish them both well.

As for the game I'm making with Digital Roar, things are moving along and we're hoping for a very early 2012 launch on, at least, mobile devices. It's a Risk based strategy game set in our Ascension universe. It will hopefully be a launching point for us so we can go on to make the games we really want to make: Ascension Incursio and Ascension Triumvirate. These will be space shooters along the lines of Descent: Freespace.

Lastly, a side project I was helping a friend with is nearly complete, which means that I should have a bit more free time opening up soon. I'm hoping with that out of the way I will have a great addition to my portfolio and will have more time to focus on this blog.

However, I'm thinking of changing things slightly on here. I don't think I will do full reviews anymore unless the game is very short. This is due to my generally busy schedule. Playing through an entire game for a review is very time consuming, and with the side things I do plus my job I don't have as much time as I'd like. Instead I am thinking of doing impressions of a game instead of a full review. This will be paired with the usual musings over various aspects of the gaming industry. I'm hoping to keep up with this better over next year.

I hope all of you have a great new year! Here's hoping that 2012 is full of amazing times and amazing games!

Where have you been?!

It's been awhile since the last post. Between a number of things I'm working on, time get's the best of me (as well as lack of sleep), but I haven't completely forgotten about my little place on the internet.

SIEGE is just around the corner. A friend of mine was approved to do a panel at the conference and will be trying to add me to it. If so, I will have another thing to work on, so will stay pretty busy. I'm also hoping to have a game ready and launched by that conference. Time, y u go by so fast?!

In terms of gaming stuff, my brother (Charles), his friend (Anthony) and I have been doing a Let's Play series for the game Dead Island. It's a fair amount of fun. Check out the videos, which I'll link here for convenience:
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 1 - Prologue & First Impressions
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 2 - Prologue & First Impressions (Currently unavailable - copyright infringement claims though it was not against copyright. You can safely start on Part 3 and not really miss anything outside of first impressions as it was not until Part 3 that we were all able to play at the same time.)
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 3 - Ahh! It's A Zombie!!
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 4 - Zombie Kickin' on the Beach
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 5 - Zombie Seduction
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 6 - Where's My Teddy Bear?!
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 7 - Tim... I'm So Sorry
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 8 - Anthony's Road Rage!!
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 9 - Get Out of The Car!
Third Hour Plays Dead Island: Part 10 -Mindless

I have a few other games I'm gonna bring up some awareness for soon, and will try to do some reviews when a little more time comes up. I know I said I would have a review of Legends of Yore sometime ago, but unfortunately I have not been able to finish. If you're still curious, check out the website. It's really a fun little game for mobile devices, and I highly recommend it.

Until next time!

A small change to review scheduling, plus other things

So after having this blog up for about a month, I have learned something that should have seemed obvious: playing and writing reviews take a lot of time! Who knew?! With all that's going on it's hard for me to work in enough time to play a game thoroughly enough for a review, and then write it, within a week's time. So I'm going to push for bi-weekly, but essentially it's going to be slow going until some of my own indie projects clear up.

In other news, I could be leading a panel (or just doing a tutorial session) on Unity development at this year's SIEGE conference in Atlanta, GA. Not 100% sure yet if I am as I'm waiting to hear back, but if so I'll have to switch focus on that.

Another thing I'm planning on working on is a YouTube channel to place "Let's Play," review supplements, and anything else game related that I do (and most likely look really stupid in). I will be working with my brother and his friend on this. Link to be edited in once it's all available.

Also, I will try to focus more on news due to time constraints. I'm gaining more and more sources, and also have been finding a number of interesting indie games that I hope to bring to your attention soon.

Lastly I am pushing to have a review of Legends of Yore up by the end of the week.

Be sure to check back, and thanks for reading!

Ludum Dare Event

These days it takes years for a game to be developed. However, there are those who decide that years are just too long. Why not just make a game in single weekend?

Enter the Ludum Dare event, where developers all across the industry take on the challenge of developing a fully functional, fully fleshed-out game within one weekend. Each event has a theme the games must follow, with this event's being "Escape." As long as it's a game where the player has to escape something, it's OK to be submitted.

Go check out the entries here, which includes a game from Minecraft developer Notch and Legends of Yore developer Coke and Code. You can also rate games.

Just don't do this during your lunch hour. You'll likely get caught and have to run... Crap. I could have submitted that as a game.

Owlboy Demo Impressions

A long time ago for Christmas I found the Super Nintendo Entertainment System sitting under the tree. It was probably the best present I had ever received from the jolly lobster known as Santa Claus. Like many other people, the console was special to me because it was my first one, and it also was home to some of my favorite games of all time. Little did I know that this system would be considered one of the best ever created with some of the best games of all time. Even its competitor, Sega Genesis, had a great line up of games. Simply put, that generation was a great time to be a gamer.

Since then we've moved onto powerhouse consoles sporting amazing 3D graphics that can occasionally border on the realistic. We have tons of great games on these newer machines, but there are times that some of us wish for games like those in that bygone era; games that are in 2D and focus on gameplay that's both fun and challenging while letting the other aspects (such as graphics, audio, and story) support it.

In today's age, the indie developer is usually the one to grant that wish. One of the greatest examples of this is D-Pad Studio's Owlboy, who's demo just landed.

Meet Otus, the Owlboy.

Owlboy is a 2D platformer with various puzzles, shooter, and stealth game in the style of old SNES and Genesis games. In the demo, pirates have attacked Otus the Owlboy's home village of Vellie. You and a mechanic named Geddy seek out the Owl Temple in order to find and use the Wind Machine to prevent another pirate attack.

Upon starting the demo, you can see that the game's visual and audio style is a great representation of those old games, which was likely the source of inspiration. The graphics are colorful and detailed, the sprites have fluid animations for this type of game, the backgrounds are beautiful and varied, and the environments are easily differentiable. The enemies are unique looking and have fluid animations. The characters are each unique though we only see a few in the demo.

The audio is also great. The sound effects match the style of the game, and each one fits the situation they are placed in. Even the music is amazing. The tracks fit their scenarios perfectly. Some create a nice ambience, one creates tension when sneaking around, and the boss music is fast-paced and full of energy. I am greatly looking forward to hearing what other music will be in the game and even hope for the possibility of a soundtrack.

The gameplay is polished and, above all, fun. You can only control Otus, but he is at a disadvantage. Though he can fly and has a spin attack to stun enemies, he has no real offensive capabilities. In order to fight you need to carry a companion around while flying who can shoot at them. That's where Geddy comes in, who carries a small gun with a decent fire rate. Later in the demo you gain a new companion with a spread-fire shot. What makes this great is that some situations and boss fights are best suited for certain companions. These can change mid-fight, forcing you to change your companion. This allows for boss fights with changing dynamics, keeping it interesting and keeping you on your toes. Lastly, should you ever leave your companion behind or he seems to have disappeared, you can press the teleport key (R on the keyboard) to teleport them to your position.

The door will only open once you solve the puzzle.

There are also puzzles scattered throughout the level. None of them are overly challenging, but as it is a demo and the fact that it is near the beginning of the game I see these as being intro puzzles that are training the player for those found later in the game. I'm hopeful that in the full version the puzzles will be more elaborate and challenging.

Stealth gameplay was also shown in the demo. There was a section where you were not allowed to fly or else you would be heard and, if you couldn't run fast enough, instantly killed. This forces you to jump around to various platforms while avoiding the enemies' lights. What was great was that you didn't have to drag your companion around during this. Once through this section you can easily teleport him to your location, allowing you to focus on getting around without being caught. It wasn't very difficult, but it did have a fair amount of tension, thanks in part to the music.

Most games tend to get bogged down by having too many gameplay elements, but Owlboy seems to combine them all very well and in manners that make sense. The stealth segments require sneaking because ultra powerful enemies can hear you flying but not really see you, thus removing the ability to shoot them. Some areas you can't fly, but there are no enemies and you are able to jump. Open areas can allow flight but have enemies in the path so you must shoot them to keep from being damaged and to continue. There are areas that require a mix of flight, platforming, and the use of your companion to solve a puzzle in order to advance. During the demo, only one of these gameplay scenarios was ever present. This was great since it allowed for good pacing, varied gameplay to maintain interest, and prevention of over-burdening the player.

 Numerous enemies, each deadly in their own way.

Another feature of the game is a shop where you can spend coupons you've found to purchase new items and gain some free bonus items. These can include: healing items, buffs of various types, and items like a hat that increases the travel speed of bullets.

There was also a hint of a response system that could allow the player to pick a response to dialogue. Upon interacting with a save spot (which replenishes health), the game displayed three faces you could choose from: a happy, a sad, and an angry face. The happy face would save the game while the other two would go back. There was no real effect for giving a negative response, and no other part of the demo had this kind of response selection, but it shows that it may be possible to control the outcomes of conversations with certain responses.

Could he fly if he attached an umbrella to his hat?

Though the demo was great, there are a few things that I wouldn't mind seeing in the final version. There are no options for the demo, so I am unsure of whether there will be keyboard mapping to allow custom controls. Also, jumping and flying are controlled by the same button, but it would be nice to have one that is specifically for jumping to prevent accidental flight. The cutscenes are great, but if you die you may not want to watch them again, so a "skip cutscene" button would be useful. Lastly, there were times that the game was waiting on me to hit a key, but there was no indication of that.

I am very excited about Owlboy. It was just like the old days with my SNES or with a friend's Genesis. The guys at D-Pad Studios obviously grew up in this era and loved it, which shows. There's a lot of hard work, passion, and creativity going into this game. If it all carries over into the final version, we will have a great nostalgic game that will soar alongside the big company blockbusters.

You can download the demo here, or visit D-Pay Studio's website.

And Yet It Moves Review (PC) - You got me spinning around.

The platforming genre is one of the industry's oldest genres. It's concept is simple that is simple to create: jump over stuff, jump on stuff, don't jump into the hole, and then perform a victory jump before jumping into bed. Because of this, a number of indie developers do this as a project to get their feet wet and learn the tools to create games. While they're at it they try to add or change elements to make their game stand out. Broken Rules studio decided that they would try to flip this genre upside-down with the game And Yet It Moves... literally.

You control a paper cutout of a random guy, who traverses the levels (also made out of paper) to find the blank piece of paper that is missing your cutout so you can merge back with it. Along the way you pass other cutouts of yourself, which act like checkpoints and point you in the right direction. The reason behind it all isn't known, but it's better than having a princess get captured for the millionth time.

The game is a platformer, but with a small difference: besides just moving and jumping, you can rotate the world around you by 90 degrees using the arrow keys. Essentially the world moves around you, not you around the world. This also means that, since the world moves and you don't, that your momentum carries you in the same direction after rotating the world as it did before rotating it. Rotating the world also causes various objects to roll around, making use of the physics side of the gameplay. Besides jumping from platform to platform to dodge death holes or other obstacles, there are some instances where objects must be moved by rotating the world in order to progress, which is where some of the puzzle elements lie. The puzzle and platforming aspects make up nearly the whole game, as less than a handful of enemies appeared throughout it. There are 3 chapters in all and an epilogue.

 One of the early levels.

One of the more unique aspects is the fact that the whole game is like a collage of paper cutouts. For these images, the team went out and took pictures of various outdoor elements (and probably found some on Google), turned them into textures, and then proceeded to make them look like they were on paper. Though the paper look is the point (the game even uses the word "ripped" instead of "died"), the majority of the themes felt like they were on constant repeat, with very little variation between levels. The different themes did vary a bit, but the initial pleasantness of seeing something new is quickly overcome by the blandness of that theme. For example, the beginning levels are inside a dirt filled cave, then it's an underground area with just dirt and roots, then a rock filled cave, and then outside in a jungle. Each one of these is different looking from the previous, but each one also repeats the same textures throughout their levels; even the backgrounds use them. This gives the game a lackluster feel early on to what could be a unique concept.

The sound is also fairly lacking. The music sounded more like ambience than actual music. The handful of other sound effects weren't unique, but fit the situation they were used in. The only other sound is when you are "ripped," which I couldn't make out if it was a guy making a crunch sound or saying the word "touch," which only my DS should be telling me to do that. The sound didn't add much for the early parts of the game, and the game could be played on mute and still provide the same experience.

After the initial training levels, the gameplay began to take a downward turn. The levels didn't feel too creative, it was often not completely clear what I needed to do in order to advance (though it always involved rotating the world in some specific manner), and there were too many times where you simply had to take a leap of faith just to see what was up ahead whereas most platformers tend to give you some ability to plan your next jump. There were also instances where it felt like things were deliberately set in a way to kill you. If the game had been designed with this as it's focal point like I Wanna Be the Man and VVVVVV, then this would be fine, but the feeling given off from the beginning is a game that's meant to be puzzling, but not deliberately difficult. This was most evident with swinging platforms that would end up killing me because either I didn't jump at the right time, I didn't use the rotation in a way that would decrease my momentum, or I used the rotation and ended up killing myself instantly with the swing due to my moment carrying me into it though it didn't appear that I lifted off of it. More often than not it was frustrating and really took away from the enjoyment.

 The platform to the right was the bane of my existence in numerous areas.

This negative aspects lingered for a fair amount of time, and I was becoming disappointed with the game.

Then the third chapter began.

 If you were on acid, you'd probably be freaking out by this point.

The theme gradually changed from the forest to something like a drug trip. The levels became far more colorful, they began to feel truly creative and alive, the platforming elements made more interesting use of the world rotation mechanic, and lastly, the game was far more fun. There was even an addition of a different type of puzzle that used the world rotation in a slightly different way. This was a great as it helped break up the gameplay a little and allowed for some very creative and somewhat thought provoking puzzles.

Lastly, there was the addition of the disappearing block segments of a level. At certain checkpoints the music would suddenly change to a fairly catchy tune and platforms would begin to appear and disappear in time with the music. These were by far the best part of the game, as all the best elements came together. The world rotation was important to pass these areas, the music was nice, it looked interesting, and were fun to go through.

These segments were, by far, my favorite.

Though it was disappointing that the majority of the game wasn't as enjoyable as the last chapter, I am still glad I played through to the end to experience the concept Broke Rules was working with. The third chapter showed the creative talent that went into the game and I would love to see more of this as long as it sticks to that chapter's formula. If you know someone who has the game and want to try it, or if you are willing to sit through the more frustrating parts, then be sure to give this a try. The last chapter will likely make you flip.