“Clearly this development team knows how to design levels and create pacing,” I said to myself, “but that means they’re probably inspired by old classics, and are trying to evoke the same experience for the player - which means they’ll have to shovel in corny tribute to the 8-bit era in order to go viral.”īut, at least so far, no such tribute has been seen. When I realized that the game was respectful of our intelligence and time, I started to brace myself for the next sign of trouble: tributes, homages, and corny plot points.
You’re not supposed to look up in the corner, puzzled, and think “Huh? I did something?” There is a learning curve, but it’s the perfect kind of learning curve, subtle and built right into new challenges. That’s how achievements are supposed to be.
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When it popped up in the corner, I was already full of joy: the achievement actually followed my joy, not the other way around. I don’t want to reveal what I did to get it, but it was something I did out of desperation in order to kill an enemy creatively, and I was not expecting to get an achievement from it. But when I finally did get some non-boss-beating achievement, it was nice. I braced myself for a stream of masturbatory “achievements” to stoke my ego, giving me the illusion of satisfaction. It’s the modern trick of making everything “epic” instead of “interesting”. I braced myself for screenfulls of spam, bullets flying everywhere, streams of disposable enemies and tons of explosions - all of which occupies your brain so that you don’t notice deeper flaws or think about stuff. You don’t have to make games with dignity, okay? What are you trying to do here, Aleksey Abramenko? I can’t trust you, because you’re not stupid! To see a game with this much dignity today is just weird, because we’ve all accepted the fact that games will never be like that again. How is this even possible? There’s something magical about it, really. Some lame ass/quirky story in order to motivate the player to finish the game in spite of all that bullshit.Huge generosity and leniency to compensate for the brutally random physics issues.“Atmospheric” stretches as bland filler.Nostalgia trips and frequent “old school tribute” in order to mask unoriginality.High energy nonsense to distract from shallow gameplay.Unconsciously, I had made a checklist of problems I expected to see any moment, and it was avoiding all of them: Within seconds, Intrusion 2 had me dodging, aiming, and jumping with an almost hypnotic connection to the character. Look at Little Big Planet as a perfect example that game relies on its charming narrator, adorable mascots, and kindergarten aesthetics to hide the sometimes-infuriating sloppiness of controlling a floaty character in a world of unpredictable physics. It looked stunning in motion, but the whole “physics” thing guaranteed that it would be unwieldy, if not sluggish. Intrusion 2 somehow stands apart from all of that, and it is masterful.Īfter watching the trailer I hesitated to even download the demo off of Steam, feeling that there must be some obvious catch once you actually started playing. Even great games seem infected by that bland cultural and self awareness that the Internet has forced artists to account for. But the sad truth is, the indie scene is so desperate to “go viral” that they’ve sold their souls too, resorting to imitation and pandering in the hopes pleasing the Almighty Aggregate.
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In a world of $20 million development budgets and brand identity raping, we look to “indie” games for the unique, unfettered visions of true artists who are free to do whatever they want. Created by Aleksey Abramenko (and only Aleksey Abramenko!) it somehow manages to be breathtakingly beautiful, perfectly playable, and gratuitously gratifying, while never sinking into pretentiousness. (Click the image to read the full article, or click here)Ĭhances are you’ve never heard of Intrusion 2, despite the fact that it is secretly a gaming demigod.