can frustrating game design choices ruin a potentially great game?
A-lot of games available have flaws/design choices that can really impact the experience of the game. For some people it may even turn them away from the game and possibly the company supporting the game. Today i want to specifically talk about a title Unbox: Newbies Adventure specifically on the Nintendo Switch. This is a game where you play as a sentient cardboard box which is designed so it can deliver itself to people and plays very much like a platformer collectathon. Like games such as Banjo-Kazooie, Mario 64 and the upcoming Mario Odyssey. I'm not going to go into much detail about the game itself as very shortly i plan to have a review out of the game itself when i've 100% completed the game.
So far I have completed the tutorial and been introduced to the HUB world and the 1st playable area so naturally wanting to complete the game i have been exploring the hub area head to toe and have so far collected roughly 95% of what's on the level in just over an hour and it has been quite an enjoyable experience but there is a noticeable amount of lack of polish at least on the switch port.
Physics in this game are odd and that’s to say the least. Within the first 10 minutes of the game I drove a car into a table which made the table start spazzing out but at the same time I started encountering some severe stuttering issues.
Ive also found it rather easy to get stuck into places and if it were not for a extra jumping mechanic which allows you to launch yourself to sacrifice a bit of health (which is easily replenishable), I wouldn't be able to get out of most situations i found myself in. but I have already been completely stuck a few times and had to respawn. There is also a respawn button which is not normal to me (for a game like this) which also points out the fact that getting stuck may happen a bit too often and instead of adding a button to easily respawn I think they should've focused on polishing up the game some more, maybe finding a way to assist the player when they get into areas where they can get stuck.
The main thing i wanted to point out when talking about this subject though was one particular encounter i've experienced so far to get one of the collectibles it seems
First two areas you see you can jump to
You have to jump over water which is a hazard to your box, self timing your jumps to get to one platform which has health packs.They replenish your health allowing you to double jump more to get to the next platform easily visible in front of you
After getting to the first platform you are greeted by health allowing you to jump more again
But once you make it to here and see more health packs you start to assume there should be an area further out to sea with a collectible to grab and in the distance i see a floating pack which refills all my health but no platform
In the distance i just see a floating health box
So i start jumping to the first health pack and then i start to see another in the distance so i keep jumping forward having to time my jumps and be precise to grab the health packs floating in the air without losing momentum
First floating box up closer
Yet another health pack leading me out to nowhere after the previous
after the third health pack i start to see a small buoy floating in the water and in the past there has been collectibles on these and the health packs seem to point towards it
Yet another health pack to keep jumping towards and a buoy is just coming into view
Final health pack and getting closer to the buoy
So after doing a total of roughly 23 jumps in a row and grabbing 4 health packs and not seeing anything else around me but the buoy i try to land on it and bam i was spot on
Buoy finally in reach!
but wait why did i just fall through it? After a few more attempts at this little challenge i visibly fall through the buoy yet again and cannot see any more health packs around that could possibly lead me anywhere else
This in itself has left me quite frustrated as i've spent the last 15 minutes alone trying to perfectly jump across the sea to reach this to find that it is either nothing there for some odd reason or the game is not registering me landing on the platform. I don't see any collectibles on the platform itself but i've noticed when travelling far distances sometimes it takes about 5 seconds after landing somewhere for the objects to appear around you.
Edit
I was just about to post this when while playing i ended up finding every collectible in the hub world now meaning even though there are specifically health packs etc placed in a row for you to jump to it leads absolutely nowhere which leaves me questioning why it is there in the first place and to clarify there are other certain areas around the hub area where you need to reach as far as possible to grab a collectible
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