This is not a game that wants you to fail, at least on a basic level. Occasionally, you’ll get Elite Beat Agents-style rhythm prompts – you know the sort, where the circle shrinks and you press a button at the right time – but these are extremely lenient. Your initial aim is simply to collect as many of them as you can and avoid the various obstacles thrown at you until you reach the end of the stage.
Each stage is on rails and has you collecting a series of hearts and various other glowing power-ups, each with varying points values. The actual game element of Sayonara Wild Hearts is straightforward enough. After all, when you’re on a motorbike shooting at a giant three-headed robot wolf, it’s not like the parallels with a relationship breakdown are immediately obvious. As with many short, artistic games, a lot of the plot here is open to interpretation: you make of the protagonist’s journey what you want to make of it. Sayonara Wild Hearts tells the story of a young woman whose heart has been broken, and takes you on her emotional journey as she tries to come to terms with it and eventually move on with her life. Now that we’re verging on “it’s so good you’ll accidentally swallow insects” territory, let’s calm down a bit and look at what we’re actually dealing with here. Whether you’re on a skateboard, a motorbike, a sports car, a horse, and whether you’re travelling through a forest, a city, the skies or some abstract Escher style world, twisting and morphing under your feet as the camera swoops around (all at a flawless 60 frames per second), you might want to put a little net in front of your mouth to stop flies taking advantage of your constantly-dropped jaw. To go into too much detail would be to spoil part of the game’s essence: half the fun here is starting a new level and letting out a wee swear word – not an angry one, but an awe-inspired one, probably with “ohhh” before it – as you realise how the game’s managed to transform its basic mechanic into yet another different style.
0 kommentar(er)
